


hero's soup is just plain water

by orphan_account



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 11:39:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17344598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Some facts about 3racha, superhero trio of District 9:- CB97 can manipulate water and is more useful than a whole team of firefighters when it comes to burning buildings; Bang Chan is probably dehydrated from the amount of coffee and instant ramen he consumes.- SpearB can control shadows and is pretty much seen as a lord of darkness by the press; Seo Changbin lost any rights to call himself dark maybe five cutesy acts ago.- J.One can teleport, and his power is mistaken for flight due to how he manages to be everywhere at once; Han Jisung just wishes he could somehow distance himself from the crush he still holds from sophomore year.





	hero's soup is just plain water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [strawhatmikans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawhatmikans/gifts).



> serena- i tried. au where it's still christmas and this isn't the world's worst belated gift, although you're not so hot with fic deadlines yourself lol. i do admire your writing a lot- you've got a way with words like it's your own personal superpower. 
> 
> this fic is inspired by the song placebo. i've pretty much of 3racha as superheroes ever since their first song i've heard. this fic doesn't start off right away mentioning them but they are a big part of the story later!!

**[PRESENT]**

 

Coming back to Sands Academy feels like sighing and jumping into a cauldron of acid.

Objectively, the place is gorgeous. Stone paths snake around the brick building, flanked by fields of green. Seungmin takes no comfort in this— he can feel the synthetic vibe to the landscape, a prickle under his veins, his power muted by concrete and rubber.

He came an hour early for the first day of school. Felix wants to scope out his classes, and Seungmin wants to say hi to Jeongin after not seeing him for an entire summer. Seungmin sits cross-legged on the bench, staring unseeing at the main entrance, fingers curled around the strap of his ratty backpack.

School hasn’t even started, and he’s tired.

“Hey! Seungmin!” a familiar voice calls, and Seungmin touches back down to earth. It’s Jeongin, walking toward him with his bag slung over one shoulder.

“Jeongin! Long time no see. I missed you.”

“Really? I didn’t miss you at all.” Jeongin’s smiling, though, no truth to his words.

 _Long time no see_ isn’t a nicety thing. The two of them legitimately couldn’t talk over the summer— the wifi at Seungmin’s place is shit, the technology even more so. Seungmin doesn’t have a phone anymore since his old one gave up on him. At least face-to-face communication is free, or Seungmin would have no friends at all.

Privately, Seungmin thinks summer did Jeongin good. There’s a bronze tan to his skin, and he’s traded out his old blue sneakers, so brown with dirt they would be hard-pressed to even be called blue, for light pink ones the shade of blown-out bubble gum. And—

“You got braces.”

“Yeah,” Jeongin says. He smiles, but it’s a self-conscious one. “My face hurt for days after the doctor put them in. I couldn’t eat anything except for baby food.”

“Well, you are a baby,” Seungmin says, and Jeongin rolls his eyes, so sure of himself now that he’s a sophomore. “They look nice, though. You don’t look _too_ ugly.”

Seungmin wants to keep the topic on Jeongin— Seungmin doesn’t want to talk about what _he_ did during the summer, or how close he was to not coming to this school at all this year. Jeongin sets his bag down on the bench, although he doesn’t sit down. The two of them have half an hour before the bell rings.

“Where’s your other half?” Jeongin asks.

Felix. Seungmin smiles, but it probably comes out more of a grimace. “Wanted to go map out his classes. He’s probably catching up with his other friends by now, though.”

Felix can make friends with just about anyone, whereas Seungmin can’t. The only two people he considers friends here are Minho, a slightly bizarre now-senior who Seungmin sits with at lunch, and Jeongin. Felix doesn’t count because he’s basically Seungmin’s brother.

Everybody else here, Seungmin is neutral about at best. He scans the people that are now starting to cluster on the stone steps and head down the sidewalk, all people who he doesn’t care much about or doesn’t like.

“Hey,” someone says, coming over, and Seungmin’s mouth twists.

Seungmin turns around to face Taehyun, who was in his math class last year, and falls in the category of _doesn’t like_. The two of them were partnered by their teacher for group work problems, and Taehyun’s surface politeness had quickly dissolved into barbs and insults. Seungmin wouldn’t care, except Taehyun has the uncanny ability to hit right where it hurts.

“I see you’re still here,” Taehyun says, eying Seungmin with a look of distaste.

“And unfortunately, so are you,” Seungmin deadpans, trying to remember to breathe. Taehyun doesn’t know about how he lost his scholarship, he reminds himself. Taehyun’s just aiming blindly and managed to get bullseye out of sheer malice and luck.

Taehyun ignores him. “Yang Jeongin, right?” he says. “I like your braces. And the shoes.”

Jeongin eyes him warily. “Okay,” he says. “Thanks?”

Seungmin is about to tell Taehyun to cut the crap and stop playing mind games, but that isn’t what comes out of his mouth. Against his will— to _Taehyun’s_ will— Seungmin feels his mouth curl into a sneer.

“God, Jeongin,” Seungmin says, and they _aren’t his words_. It’s his voice, but they aren’t his words. “You think a mouth full of metal and some new shoes are gonna just disguise the fact you’re, I don’t know, poor as hell?”

Seungmin slams a hand against his mouth. Jeongin’s mouth drops, eyes darkening with hurt. Seungmin whirls on Taehyun, who’s got the ghost of a self-satisfied smile on his face.

“Wow,” Taehyun says. “Really playing the part of the hypocrite, you know?”

Seungmin can’t even come up with a good comeback, too shocked. Taehyun has a power, like everyone does, but that power is usually weak. Taehyun’s never been able to put whole sentences into Seungmin’s mouth; before, all Taehyun could do was occasionally cause Seungmin to choke mid-phrase or stutter over a word.

But the more important matter at hand is Jeongin. It’s the first day of junior year, and Seungmin might have just lost one of his best friends. “Jeong-” Seungmin starts, but Jeongin is no longer there.

“What the fuck?” Taehyun says, tripping, hands braced across the concrete, pushed down by an invisible force. Seungmin doesn’t even register this, just scanning the horizons for Jeongin. The kid’s always been a fast runner.

Seungmin cuts his gaze over to Taehyun before shaking his head and walking away. Venom fills his veins, and Seungmin thinks about making plants grow out of the ground, wrap around Taehyun’s wrists and ankles until he can’t move.

But the concrete’s too thick, and it doesn’t matter, anyway. Seungmin’s lost this round.

\---

“Oh,” Minho says, at lunch. “You haven’t heard about energy?”

“What,” Seungmin says dully. He’s just sat through five classes, where the teachers did their _welcome back_ spiels and Seungmin couldn’t pay attention because he was too busy trying to figure out what had gone down that morning.

“Energy’s the new superpower supplement that everybody’s talking about,” Minho says. “Or, well, not _talking_ about, because it’s technically illegal, but everybody knows about it. That’s probably what this guy was on.”

Everybody except Seungmin, but then again, he was basically disconnected from the rest of the world over the summer. “Okay, rewind. _What_?”

Minho’s mouth twists into a sympathy smile. “Yeah.”

Seungmin shakes his head. “Don’t most supplements, like, not work?” he asks. Supplements are illegal, and they aren’t supposed to work. At least, not as well as this morning.

Superpowers are weird things. They aren’t the stuff of comics or movies; in real life, superpowers are hard to master, and hard to use. To use a power is draining, causing headaches and soreness. Most people move on to easier, more realistic talents, their superpowers stored away for one-time party tricks.

Supplements to strengthen superpowers or make them easier to use have been around for a long time, but most of them are scams, or come with terrible side effects. They were banned a century ago.

“Energy works,” Minho says. “At least from what I’ve heard.”

Minho usually isn’t wrong. “So what do you know about it, then?”

Unlike Seungmin, Minho always manages to stay in the loop. Both of them are scholarship kids, but no one picks on Minho because Minho, paradoxically, is just so obviously weird. Too easy of a target for any real satisfaction.

“I don’t know the exact details either, but I think it started circulating sometime in the summer,” Minho says. “From what I’ve heard, you’re only supposed to take a pill a day, but some people are taking way more and there haven’t been any side effects or anything.”

“And the pills… just let you use your superpower without getting tired?”

Minho snaps his fingers. “That’s the gist of it. Well, you have to take more pills if you want your superpower to be, like, really powerful, but most people are at least a _little_ cautious about doing that.”

Seungmin takes a moment to evaluate that. “Sounds strange.”

“Yeah, sounds too good to be true for me, too. I’m not touching that stuff,” Minho says, then laughs. “Not that my opinion matters at all. I’m pretty sure one bottle costs more than my kidney and spleen combined.”

“You think Taehyun was on this stuff this morning?”

“I don’t know who that is, but I’m willing to bet on it. Do you know if he’s rich?” Minho asks. Seungmin nods— from what he heard, Taehyun’s family is _loaded_ . “Ugh, whatever. _I’m_ just interested to see how all this plays out.”

Seungmin rests his cheek on his forearm. “You said it was called energy, yeah? I’m gonna search it up.”

Sands Academy gives its students shiny laptops— Seungmin received his during second period. He opens it, types in _energy_ , clicks on _energy supplement controversy_ when it fills in, and clicks on the first article.

He reads, eyes narrowing. Apparently scientists and legal enforcement are all over this, but scientists have so far found no negative effects and legal enforcement is fumbling over what to do. Seungmin can understand that— at best, legal enforcement in District 9 is corrupt and incompetent.

Whatever. Minho is right— one bottle costs more than Seungmin’s kidney and spleen, and maybe his trachea as well. He snaps the laptop shut. “Alright then. I don’t really care about this. Do you happen to know where Jeongin is?”

“Uh, I haven’t seen him all day,” Minho says. “I’m sure he’ll come around, though.”

“You didn’t _see_ what happened,” Seungmin says. And he isn’t in the mood to explain it to Minho, either. Seungmin knows it wasn’t his words coming out of his mouth, but it was still technically him that said it, and if he were Jeongin, he wouldn’t be able to stand it.

“Chin up, Jeongin loves me too much to stay away for long,” Minho says. “I adopted him. He’s my freshman.”

“Sophomore, now,” Seungmin reminds him. “And I’m a junior.”

“Like I said, he’s my freshman,” Minho says. “He’ll always be a freshman to me.”

“ _You’re_ going to be a freshman next year.” Minho’s eyebrows furrow; he’s clearly as shocked by that thought as Seungmin is. Minho’s going to college next year, and Seungmin can’t help but already miss him. Lunch will feel empty without Minho’s ramblings.

There’s an almost tangible hole in the place where Jeongin is supposed to be. Seungmin looks over at the spot and double-takes when he thinks he sees a burrito vanish off the table. “Did you see that?” Seungmin demands.

“What?” Minho says. “You’ve broken my brain with the freshman thing.”

“The— disappearing burrito—” Seungmin says, but by the look Minho gives him, it’s clear that Minho did _not_ , in fact, see. “Nevermind.”

He chalks it up to a hallucination, and stares despondently at the rest of the cafeteria. Back to school, he thinks gloomily, then narrows his eyes when he spots Felix. Seungmin and Felix don’t sit together, which Seungmin is okay with, but Felix is sitting with Seo Changbin.

Seungmin hasn’t heard good things about Changbin. “Seriously, Felix?” he mutters.

Minho follows his line of sight. “I’ve talked to Changbin, the guy’s pretty cool,” he says. Seungmin doesn’t feel reassured. “Dude, have some faith in Felix’s taste, will you? You’re gonna explode from worrying so much.”

Seungmin glares. “I’m not _worrying_.”

That’s a lie. He’s worrying about everything— whether Jeongin will sit with them again, why Felix is sitting with Changbin, if Seungmin himself will be able to make it through the year. Being a junior sucks, and it’s only the first day.

“Not everyone’s like Taehyun,” Minho says.

Seungmin ignores this and focuses at the spot where Jeongin’s supposed to be sitting again.

“It’s just, the burrito _disappeared_ ,” he tries, and Minho shrugs.

\---

Math is the last period of the day, and Seungmin just wants to go home.

He can already tell he’s going to fail all of his tests this year. Calculus AB. Geometry was hell, Algebra a nightmare, and Seungmin feels that Calculus will be worse than both combined.

“Alright,” the teacher, Mrs. Moon, says. The projector behind her reads, _LET’S CALC IT UP!_ “Welcome back to school, I’m sure all of you are ready for the year end already—”

“Sorry I’m late,” somebody says, bursting through the doorway, and everyone looks at him. “I got lost and walked into the wrong room.”

A knot ties itself in Seungmin’s stomach. It’s Han Jisung, who Seungmin has a past with. Not a present, just a past. Jisung makes brief eye contact with him before he looks away. Seungmin slinks down on in his seat.

Jisung knows how he isn’t supposed to be here this year.

Mrs. Moon looks vaguely amused. “I’ll let you off because it’s the first day,” she says. “Although I believe you had a class with me in the same room last year, Jisung.”

“Nice to see you again,” Jisung chirps, and slides into one of the available seats, way in the back.

“Now,” Mrs. Moon says, voice suddenly sharp. “I’ve heard about energy. I’m not stupid enough to believe you guys won’t touch it just because it’s illegal, but let me remind you that using your powers inside of school isn’t allowed, and will be punished.”

Seungmin wonders if some variation of this speech has been given in all of his other classes, and he’s just been too distracted to catch it. Now, he’s all too aware of his surroundings. He wonders if the stare at the back of his head is just his imagination.

“Besides, Calc AB is going to be hard, powers or no,” she says, smiling. “As long as you study hard, though, you’ll do fine.”

Seungmin is _really_ bad at math, but he won’t correct her. He zones out, thinking about last year. Thinks about forty hours of community service, which had been some of the best and worst forty hours of his life.

 

**[PAST]**

 

Seungmin gets into Sands Academy on a sports scholarship— baseball, to be precise. Sands likes to give some of its coveted enrollment spots to kids who happened to be born on the wrong side of town, scholarship so hefty as to almost be free.

But after Seungmin fucks up his elbow, he’s no longer someone Sands deems worthy of said philanthropy. Seungmin swears the world actually dims after he gets the news he won’t be able to play anymore.

The board of Sands Academy waffles for awhile on what to do, before deciding that Seungmin can finish the rest of sophomore year given he do forty hours of community service, and then he’ll transfer back to his local high school for junior and senior year.

Felix probably takes the news worse than Seungmin does. “I’m sorry,” Felix whispers, and Seungmin shrugs, the dip of his shoulders an _it’s okay_.

So in October of tenth grade, Seungmin finds himself with a packet of various volunteering opportunities listed on it in miniscule font, along with a chart for signatures to prove attendance. To be honest, Seungmin doesn’t care anymore. Most people carry their hopes in their hearts— Seungmin had carried his in his arm, and it had given out on him.

Seungmin throws a pencil on the page, and the tip lands on _Sands Forest Preserve_.

Later, Seungmin will wonder if this is somehow Minho’s doing. Minho has the ability to manipulate probability, and this is so coincidental as to almost be cruel. Seungmin’s own power is to control plant growth, but Seungmin had chosen baseball over it.

At least it’s a forest preserve. He gets the mental image of trees, cartoonish brown trunks and bright green circles of leaves.

When he gets there on a cool Saturday morning, it isn’t anything like that. He fidgets awhile, half wondering where the volunteering is supposed to take place and half hoping he can go home, when—

“Hey!” a voice says. Seungmin turns around, uncertain. The guy in front of him sports an obnoxious red hat and a crooked grin.

“Uh, hell?”

“You’re Seungmin, right? Felix’s brother?” the other says. “I think I’ve seen you around.”

Seungmin automatically dislikes this guy a bit for knowing Seungmin’s name when Seungmin doesn’t know his; he feels like they’re on uneven ground. “Yeah,” he says, shoving his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. “You?”

“I’m Jisung. You here to volunteer?” Seungmin nods. “Same. Okay, you actually came to like, the wrong entrance, but that’s no problem. We can just walk to the right one.”

“There’s more than one entrance?”

“Yeah. This place is huge.” Seungmin is only starting to see that. “Just follow me.”

Seungmin follows obediently, hands in his pockets, staring at the scenery. The air blows against his face. Jisung navigates the trail easily like he’s been here several times before.

Jisung hums a bubble-gum pop tune as he walks, Seungmin trailing after him, and eventually the two of them stop in front of a group of people, all of them wearing khakis and boots. Seungmin feels underdressed with his sweatpants and beat-up sneakers. Oh well. He has no clothes he’ll feel bad about ruining.

“This is Seungmin,” Jisung says to one of the people, a guy with wrinkles in his face and gray hair. “He goes to my school.”

“So nice to meet you,” the guy says. “I’m Seokwoo. Always good to see a fresh face around here.”

“Nice to meet you too,” Seungmin says, internally wincing. He’s only here for volunteer hours, not out of any kindness of his heart, and Seokwoo’s going to realize that soon.

“Seokwoo’s the steward. He’s like, a real-life Lorax,” Jisung explains to him, popping a cap off a water bottle and taking a sip. “And during break, he always gives out cookies, so that’s great, too.”

“We get it, the food’s the only reason you volunteer,” Seokwoo says drily, before turning to the rest of the circle. “Alright, guys. This is Seungmin, Jisung’s friend. He goes to Sands? Yeah?”

Seungmin nods in confirmation, although he thinks, _we’re not friends_.

“We’re all going to be after prairie dropseed and little bluestem today, and I’ll give you guys special assignments as we go,” Seokwoo continues, and here, Seungmin is confused. Seokwoo hands out some plastic bags, then walks off toward the fields. “Let’s get it!”

The circle of people disperse, and Seungmin stands rooted to the spot. Maybe he shouldn’t have just thrown a pencil at the page— he understood nothing that just came out of Seokwoo’s mouth. It might as well have been French.

“Sorry, sometimes Seokwoo forgets that not everybody has the entire wildflower index of District 9 memorized,” Jisung says, and Seungmin turns around to see that Jisung has hung back with him. “Basically, we’re going to collect seeds today. It’s not as complicated as he makes it seem.”

“You understood that?”

“I’ve been volunteering here since freshman year, that’s the only reason. Here, follow me. I’ll explain to you what he was talking about.”

Jisung wades out into the sea of grasses, and Seungmin follows, letting Jisung explain to him what he needs to do. He hates this, needing somebody else’s guidance, but it’s better than standing around not knowing what to do at all, he supposes.

“And this is field mint,” Jisung explains. “You can kind of tell by its smell, and then you just like—” he plucks a head off and puts it in his ziploc bag “— pluck its little hairy balls off—”

Seungmin considers himself apathetic to the world. It’s the only way he’s gotten through this whole injury business. But when Jisung says that, his dirty mind kicks in, and Seungmin has to bite down on his lip to keep from laughing. What _is_ this? he thinks. Is he still in middle school?

Jisung takes in his expression. “Oh, shit,” Jisung says, realizing. “I didn’t mean it like that—”

“Are you sure?” Seungmin asks, despite himself.

Jisung starts to laugh, and it’s a contagious sort of laugh. Seungmin coughs into his sleeve. He is absolutely not supposed to be enjoying himself here. He’s supposed to get his volunteer hours so he can stay in this fucking school for the year.

But deep down, he has to admit this place is amazing. Seungmin’s power is dimmed in the urban environment, but here, he’s in tune with all the millions of plants, tiny individual lives like bright pinpricks in his subconscious. He reaches out and snaps a head off of a stalk of field mint.

Jisung smiles at him. “Get your mind out of the gutter.”

“ _I_ didn’t say anything,” Seungmin retorts.

He walks around, collecting mint and dropseed and bluestem, Ziploc bags wrinkling under his hands. Grasses wrap around his ankles, vines press against his thighs. Jisung complains about how hard his classes are. Seungmin listens.

They get a break an hour and a half in, and true to Jisung’s promise, there are cookies. “I literally love this place,” Jisung admits. “Do you like it?”

“I got so many seeds stuck in my pants,” Seungmin says. It’s true— half the preserve is in his pants, seeds with little hooks on them so they cling to the material. “But yeah. I like it.”

“Don’t wear sweatpants next time.”

Seungmin gets his packet signed by Seokwoo for three hours of volunteering. Apparently, Jisung is here every weekend. Seungmin doesn’t know how to feel about this: Jisung’s enthusiasm and inability to keep to himself, the dizzying awareness of all the plants around him, but Seungmin decides why not. It’s easy hours.

\---

Two weeks later, they stop collecting seeds in the restored areas and go to the places in the preserve that aren’t so nice. Seungmin doesn’t get what that means until he steps inside, where he has to bite back a wince.

It’s so _ugly_. That’s the only way he can explain it. This place hasn’t been cleared yet, so it’s filled with invasive species, and Seungmin feels tangles inside the soil, roots that shouldn’t be there strangling out other life, taking up nutrients and water. He senses a couple of native plants in the mess, holding out as best they can.

But cutting down the invasive species is even more fun than seed collection. They get saws and loppers, with jagged metal teeth and giant claws, respectively, like weaponry, to take the invasives down.

Seungmin laughs as he sees Jisung struggle with a giant buckthorn. “Need some help?”

Jisung glares. “ _Yes_.”

Trees are usually out of Seungmin’s realm of control, but he breaks a couple of the carbon bonds within the cut Jisung has made, and Jisung yelps in surprise as the tree breaks and falls to the ground. “Whoa,” he says. “Is that your power?”

Seungmin shrugs, not wanting to elaborate too much. “Kinda, yeah.”

“That’s so cool,” Jisung says. “Can I show you my power as well, then?”

“Why not,” Seungmin says.

“Okay, so, first off put down the saw,” Jisung says, and Seungmin lets it go with some reluctance. “Are you okay with holding hands?”

“Uh, sure?” Seungmin hedges, and that’s all the confirmation that Jisung needs, because Jisung steps over and intertwines their fingers together. Seungmin registers for a split second the feeling of Jisung’s skin, warm and chapped, before his whole body seems to flip over.

It isn’t that holding hands with Jisung is just _that_ extraordinary, it’s that suddenly, Seungmin is no longer on the ground. The two of them are instead up in the branches of a giant cherry oak, Jisung holding onto the trunk to make sure neither of them slip.

“Whoa,” Seungmin says, too awed to be cynical. His plant manipulation seems lame compared to this. He wonders how much Jisung had to practice to get to this point— not only to teleport himself, but to teleport somebody else. He jokes, “And here I thought this was just an excuse to hold my hand.”

“I’m not sleazy,” Jisung protests. “But yeah. Isn’t this awesome?”

“Kinda, yeah.” Seungmin sits down on the branch, swinging his feet. He can see the prairie grass from up here, like a field of gold. A few hundred meters away is another woodland ecosystem, trees blazing green and yellow and red from autumn. “How do you do that?”

“Teleportation.”

“No shit. But isn’t this like, a lot? Aren’t you tired?”

“It’s not that big a distance, so no,” Jisung says. He leans his back against the trunk, folding his legs up on the branches in a criss-cross position. “I just teleport all the time, I guess. When I was younger, I practiced it a lot on my friends.”

“You… teleported them?”

“No. I used teleportation to win at hide-and-seek and tag.” Jisung grins.

That’s so… _extra_ , but Seungmin has to admit that it bore results. “You needed a superpower to win at tag?”

“I will kick you off this tree,” Jisung jokes, with no heat behind it. “Nah, I just… I think it’s really cool that we all get superpowers, you know? Like you know how other kids read superhero comics and wanted to be superheroes?”

“Yeah?”

“And then they stop wanting to become superheroes after they realize that using your superpower is so hard and tiring? I just never lost that idealism, I guess,” Jisung says. “I have the mentality of a five-year-old, I know.”

“No, I think that’s the coolest thing you’ve said.”

“You haven’t known me that long. I say cool things all the time.”

“I will kick you off this tree _and_ into push you into the brush pile,” Seungmin says, gesturing at the fire that they’ve been burning the invasives in. “I never wanted to be a superhero, though.”

“Really?”

When you grow up in the South Sector of District 9, you don’t expect to be a superhero. It’s hard enough being a regular person. “I always thought my superpower was lame,” Seungmin says. “It’s just plant manipulation.”

“But what you did with that tree was pretty awesome.”

With anybody else, Seungmin would think they were making fun of him, since all he did was make the tree fall with the path of gravity. But Jisung’s words sound sincere.

“I… usually can’t control trees, though. So the only things I can reliably control are flowers,” Seungmin says. “If a kid bullied me, all I could do was maybe grow a dandelion out of the sidewalk at them.”

Jisung can _teleport_. That’s just about the most useful thing ever. Seungmin wonders how his superpower works. What Seungmin technically does is speed up growth, so it’s easier when conditions are right. Trees, Seungmin can’t mess with. They’re too complex.

“Let’s go down now,” Seungmin says, feeling as if he’s divulged too much. Jisung takes his hand, and suddenly, they’re back on solid ground.

Seungmin goes about hacking and dragging the brush toward the fire. Sweat beads on his forehead. Jisung helps him out when some multiflora rose tangles around his legs— at least Seungmin’s wearing jeans this time.

“I feel like you’re enjoying this _too_ much,” Jisung says. “What we’re technically doing is like, murder and arson.”

Seungmin smiles and holds up his saw. “Yeah. Super fun.”

\---

In December, there’s a seed processing event. Before it, there’s a potluck, and Seungmin brings a bag so he can slip some of the fancy pastas and cakes in there back for Felix and his mom.

He doesn’t know what seed processing entails, but apparently it entails face masks and giant mesh screens and wooden boxes. There’s a guy at the front with a dictionary of all the plants in District 9, and Seungmin is intimidated.

There’s literally millions of seeds in the room right now, and if Seungmin concentrates, he can feel them explode like fireworks with life. Seungmin takes a bag of purple hyssop to start with and starts to roll stems of it against one of the silver mesh screens, watching in fascination as the seeds spill out into the box beneath.

“Hey,” Jisung says cheerfully, joining him. His smile is obscured by his face mask.

“Get your own seeds,” Seungmin says. Secretly, he hopes Jisung stays. Seungmin likes talking to him.

“Nah.” Jisung grabs some more hyssop out of the bag and starts rolling the stems against the other end of the mesh screen. “We’re going to be here for four hours at least, I need the company. Even if it’s, like, you.”

“Thanks. You can go, you know.” Jisung looks at him, and Seungmin _knows_ he’s smiling, even if he can’t see it. “What’s with the face masks?”

“Seokwoo told me that it gets really dusty in here.”

Jisung is right, because by the time they’ve gotten through hyssop and coreopsis and cordgrass, Seungmin’s eyes are watering and his lungs feel scratchy. Jisung sneezes every five seconds. “Oh god,” Jisung says. “I think I can taste the plants.”

“Don’t you like, volunteer here of your own accord?” Seungmin asks. “Why would you do this to yourself?”

“I actually haven’t been to a seed process before, they only do it once a year and I missed last year’s,” Jisung says, with another sneeze. Seungmin’s eyes burn. “Jesus. I’m not coming to this thing next year. I think I’m having fifty allergic reactions at once.’

Seungmin actually likes this. He would come here of his own accord, he thinks, but it isn’t his choice. He isn’t going to explain that to Jisung, though. Jisung is kind and funny, but Seungmin doesn’t trust him that much yet.

There’s seed dust everywhere in the air, and Seungmin thinks idly of prairies in bloom in the future. “You know what Hanahaki disease is?” Jisung asks.

“No?”

“It’s like, a myth that if you’re in one-sided love, flowers will start growing in your lungs and eventually kill you,” Jisung explains, and Seungmin furrows his brows. “Don’t laugh, but I used to think it was real.”

“I assure you, your lungs aren’t a great place for plants to be growing,” Seungmin deadpans.

“Yeah, but like, all these seeds,” Jisung says. “I wonder if the disease works the other way around? Like, if there are seeds in my lungs, then I start to fall into one-sided love?”

“You’re forgetting that the disease isn’t real in the first place,” Seungmin says, and he can almost see Jisung pout behind his face mask. “Don’t tell me you believe in flower language, too?”

“Shut _up_ ,” Jisung whines.

Seungmin doesn’t think the language of flowers is real. Especially not when it only provides meanings for the exotic blooms: roses, carnations, gardenias. He’s pretty sure one would be hard-pressed to find a meaning to the cordgrass they’re working with right now.

“I don’t think the flower language is completely accurate,” Seungmin says slowly. “Actually, I think it’s total bullshit. But flowers themselves… I think they do kind of have meaning. For some people.”

“What are you saying?”

“I used to think flowers were really dumb and useless when I was younger,” Seungmin says, and then wonders if he’s _really_ going to tell Jisung this story, before he decides why not, it isn’t like he’ll be talking to Jisung next year, anyway.

Oh, he’s not going to be talking to Jisung next year. He doesn’t expect that fact to hurt, doesn’t expect _anything_ to hurt after his elbow gave out, but it does, and he has to tell himself that relationships are ephemeral, anyway, like flowers he can’t control.

Jisung is silent, letting Seungmin waffle without knowing the depth behind the hesitation.

“But when I was eleven, my mom was… really depressed because her husband died,” Seungmin says. “It was winter, and I would grow flowers and bring them to her, and she seemed to come to life a bit more when I did. So that’s how I ended up practicing my power.”

“That’s amazing,” Jisung says. “You’re like a superhero.”  

Seungmin raises an eyebrow. “Uh huh.”

“No, you are,” Jisung says. “Like, superheroes don’t have to be, like, industrial-scale, you know? You saved one person and that counts.”

“I wouldn’t say I _saved_ her,” Seungmin hedges. He doesn’t like the way Jisung is looking at him, all starry-eyed. He doesn’t feel like he deserves that at all. “Anyway, I think we’re done with the cordgrass now.”

Jisung silently empties the seeds into the bag and brings them over to front desk to be catalogued, and Seungmin empties the chaff into a giant bag labeled _wetland_ . “It’s like, snowing _and_ hailing outside,” Jisung comments. “Snailing.”

“Snailing.” Seungmin bites down a laugh. He goes over to a bag, marked with the scientific name abbreviations _men arv_ , and he doesn’t realize until he dumps the bag out that— “Hey, isn’t this dried-out field mint?”

“So,” Jisung says, before Seungmin can make the joke. “To get the seeds, you kinda just pluck the little hairy balls off—”

 

**[PRESENT]**

 

Seungmin stops going to the preserve after sophomore year ends.

There are no more wildflowers or grasses in his life now. Now it’s all exotic blooms, the kind flower language caters to. He works in a shop called For You, which specializes in selling flowers and chocolate.

He got the job in the summer.

“I told you,” Seungmin had told his mom. “I _lost my scholarship_.”

“I know. I’m working on finding something,” she had said. “But Seungmin, you can’t go to our local high school. The teachers are on strike half the time and nobody learns anything.”

Seungmin _knows_ that. It’s just that baseball has always been his ticket, his worth, and now he’s lost it. He doesn’t do well at school, not like Felix, who goes to Sands Academy on an academic scholarship.

In the end, that’s what motivates him. He wants to go to the same school as his adoptive brother, even if he doesn’t see much of a future for himself and he doesn’t belong.

At For You, Seungmin’s salary started off low, the same as any other part-time job. But then Seungmin tells the manager that the shop doesn’t need to buy the flowers anymore, because he can grow them.

He doesn’t expect the store to actually make the switch, but they do. Instead of buying the blooms, they start buying seed packets and bags of dirt and fertilizer, and they boost his salary. Seungmin doesn’t know the exact amount the store is saving by doing this, and he doesn’t know if his salary is upped as much as it should be, but he doesn’t care.

After the summer, his family has enough to cover half of Sands Academy’s tuition, and after his mom does some haggling, Sands allows him to go and pay it off month by month.

The trade-off to all this is that Seungmin is _exhausted_.

He loses track of how many flowers he grows, how many stalks he passes off to his coworker, Soyeon, to tie into pretty bouquets. He places the seeds in the soil and gets ready for the pain and headache that comes as he forces the seed to open, to suck the nutrients from the soil and grow toward the fluorescent lights.

None of it is natural. It’d be easier if it were actual sunlight.

His hours have been cut down since school started, and he drags himself into the shop and toward the back, where there are bags of dirt and seed packets. “Hey,” Soyeon says. “No specialty bouquets today.”

“Thank _god_ ,” Seungmin groans.

“I’ve been meaning to ask, how are you holding up using your superpower that much?” Soyeon asks, careful.

Seungmin is confused for only a second before he realizes what she’s getting at. “I’m not on energy,” he says.

“I figured you weren’t, since you look so tired,” Soyeon says. It takes awhile to place the emotion in her voice, but then he figures it out: Seungmin thinks his coworker might be _worried_.

“Yeah, I couldn’t get energy if I tried,” Seungmin says. He takes a seat behind the counter, resting his hand on his cheek. “It’s fine. I’m used to it.”

“Alright, hang in there,” Soyeon says. “Screw this shop, though. Whatever they’re paying you, they should be paying you more.”

“I mean, it’s money. What can you do.”

Soyeon laughs, but it’s uneasy. Seungmin wonders how bad he looks. Growing flowers take its toll on him, but he’s also exhausted from school, and it’s still the first goddamn day. Somebody comes toward the counter.

It’s Hyunjin, a regular. “Hey,” Hyunjin says.

Hyunjin comes in every week or so to get a pre-ordered package, which Seungmin assumes is specialty chocolate. The two of them live in different worlds; Hyunjin is his age, maybe a little older, but can afford to get something like that every week. Seungmin doesn’t dislike him, though. The two of them usually make small talk during the exchange.

“Hey,” Seungmin says.

“Has school started for you, too?” Hyunjin asks.

“Yeah,” Seungmin says, and mimes a vomiting motion.

Hyunjin grins. “Same.”

“I’ll go get your chocolate now,” Seungmin says, and disappears off into the back to find a package that’s neatly marked for Hwang Hyunjin in gold script. This place is so pretentious, he swears. He comes back to the counter and hands it over. “Alright, is that it?”

“You know me.” Hyunjin sticks the package under his arm and walks out the door.

“You gotta wonder who all that chocolate’s for,” Soyeon comments. “Maybe he’s interning at some place and getting this for his boss or something. Or, he’s just really nice to his significant other.”

“I wonder who managed to catch him,” Seungmin jokes. Hyunjin is the kind of person that’s easy to fall for— a classic dreamy stranger. But whenever Seungmin thinks of romance, all he can think of is a bright grin and a mind as in the gutter as his own.

\---

Seungmin tows himself back home at eight, struggling to keep his eyes open.

 _Home_ is a very relative word. In terms of the physical building, everything that can possibly rust has rusted, the paint is peeling off the walls, and the windows are either stuck or cracked. That’s just what the South Sector of District 9 looks like, though.

But in terms of the people, yeah, it’s home. And, well, not-humans, too.

“Hey, Tree,” Seungmin says, when he unlocks the door and sees the cat slink toward him.

Tree purrs, blinks at him with, well, a cat-like gaze. Tree is relatively cylindrical in shape, with gray fur, and everybody in their household is in love with her.

“I think it’s funny how we still insist on using English with Tree,” Felix comments, coming out from where he was obscured by a laundry basket. “Even though she has no idea what we’re saying.”

“Not everybody can speak cat like you,” Seungmin retorts, and Felix rolls his eyes.

Seungmin and Felix aren’t actual twins, or brothers, or whatever they refer to themselves as in public. They were best friends when they were younger, and when Felix’s parents died in a train accident, Seungmin’s mom took him in.

They just tell people they’re brothers. It’s easier, and they might as well be.

Felix never treats Seungmin like he’s made of glass, which Seungmin is grateful for. Felix doesn’t comment on how Seungmin goes into incognito mode at school or the dark bags under Seungmin’s eyes.

“For the last time, I don’t _speak cat_ ,” Felix says.

“Yeah, yeah,” Seungmin says. He still doesn’t get the logistics of Felix’s power. Felix can communicate to animals, but Seungmin isn’t sure whether all animals liking Felix has to do with his power or just how Felix _is_. Naturally likeable.

“Mom’s passed out on the couch,” Felix says, and nods toward where their mom is sleeping on the holey floral print, arm hanging off to the side. “She says to wake her up never.”

“Noted.” Seungmin walks toward the small area they’ve carved out that they call the kitchen, prying open a can of soup. He pours the contents out into a bowl and sticks it into the microwave. “Do you have Moon for Calc? She gave us homework on the first day.”

“Ugh, no, I have Yoo.” Felix winces. “No homework, but everybody tells me he can’t teach, so I’m not sure whether to be happy about that.”

“It’s Calc BC. I’m sure the material’s incomprehensible whether he teaches well or not.”

Felix shrugs. Seungmin spoons soup into his mouth— the sides of the bowl are blazing hot, but the liquid itself is lukewarm. He takes out the worksheet from his backpack and starts filling answers in. It’s a review packet, and he remembers nothing.

Felix takes a seat next to him, messaging somebody on _his_ Sands laptop, Tree settling herself comfortably into his lap. Seungmin sneaks a peek over at the screen. “So,” Seungmin says. “Seo Changbin.”

“He’s pretty nice, yeah,” Felix says, continuing to type, before rolling his eyes at the expression Seungmin gives him. “Come on, you too? Seriously, he only looks intimidating, and people like to spread rumors. Don’t give me that look.”

“I could care less about rumors,” Seungmin says. “I just don’t want him messing with you.”

“Have more faith in me, goddammit,” Felix says, frustrated. Seungmin turns back to the worksheet he doesn’t understand or care about. Seungmin has faith in Felix, but he’s hard-pressed to trust him around Sands kids. “You could sit with us at lunch.”

“Uh, sorry, no,” Seungmin says. He’s perfectly good where he sits right now, at the back of the cafeteria with Minho and Jeongin, although Jeongin was a no-show today. “You could sit with _us_ at lunch.”

“Hmm. Maybe I will.” Felix lifts his chin. “Where was Jeongin today, by the way? I missed him over the summer.”

Felix is fond of Jeongin. He doesn’t go as far as call Jeongin an _adoptive freshman_ last year like Minho, but there’s something about Jeongin that makes him fun to fuss over, much to Jeongin’s eternal ire. “Ah,” Seungmin says, bitter. “Long story.”

“We got time.”

“Just— you heard of what energy is?” Felix nods. Seungmin wonders if Felix just found out, or if he knew before and just never bothered to mention it. “This guy was on it, and he controlled me into insulting Jeongin. Fucked up.”

“Dude, that’s— yeah, that’s fucked up,” Felix says, astounded. He doesn’t make Seungmin repeat the insult, a mild consolation. “I’m sure Jeongin will come around, though. He like, adores you.”

“Here’s to hoping,” Seungmin mutters.

“Who controlled you?” Felix demands.  

“I’m not saying. Besides, what are you gonna do, glare at him when he comes past you next time?” Seungmin says. He won’t tell the name for fear Felix actually _will_ do something and lose his scholarship. “Or set Tree on him?”

“You’re my baby brother. Nobody messes with you.”

“Uh, I’m literally one week younger than you,” Seungmin scoffs. “And I can take care of myself.”

\---

To Seungmin’s relief, the next day, Jeongin is back with them at lunch. Turns out Felix and Minho were right about Jeongin not holding a grudge; he slides into the seat next to Seungmin and says, “Hey, guys,” like nothing happened at all.

“Jeongin!” Seungmin says. “Listen, I just wanna explain—”

“No, no, I got it,” Jeongin says. “Energy, yeah? Taehyun was messing with us.”

“ _Not_ an okay prank to pull,” Seungmin says. He searches Jeongin’s face for any sort of anger, any sort of hurt, but Jeongin’s face is clear as day, and Seungmin is grateful. “Like, if okay was the sun, _that_ would be Pluto.”

“My favorite planet,” Minho comments idly. “Anyway, Jeongin, glad you’re here so you can see this. It’s kind of hilarious but also kind of sad.”

He taps on a link on his phone, and Seungmin and Jeongin crowd around it to read an article about a new superhero duo. Seungmin doesn’t get more than a paragraph in before he snorts. “2basco?” he asks. “Is this a joke?”

“I know! That was my reaction, too,” Minho says.

District 9 is home to a superhero trio by the name of 3racha— their first sighting was about a year ago, and they’re generally just a fun topic, whether it’s debating the identities of J.One, SpearB, and CB97, or ranting about whatever badassery they’ve pulled in the past week.

Jeongin grabs Minho’s phone, which has a long fracture down the screen, scrolling through the comments section. “Everybody’s saying they’re on energy,” he comments. “Somebody said _lol what’s next, 4cestershire_ — I’m gonna thumbs-up that one. Wait, nevermind, you thumbs-upped it already.”

“Yeah, it’s a clever comment,” Minho says. Jeongin slides the phone back, and Minho carelessly drops it into his backpack, ignoring when it hits the floor instead. “But yeah. They’re definitely not the newest 3racha wannabes. They’re just the first ones, to, well—”

“So obviously plagiarize?” Jeongin supplies.

“Yeah, _that_. But there’s a bunch of other new groups that made news over the summer. None of them have lasted very long.”

“I wonder what 3racha thinks of all that,” Seungmin says.

“I was thinking the same thing!” Minho says. “Ugh. If I were CB97, I’d totally have like, a spam twitter page—”

Jeongin says cheekily, “–And this is why you’re not CB97—”

“But 3racha really insist on the whole anonymity thing. Shame. If they slipped, it’d make a real good story,” Minho mutters. “No, but the fact nobody knows who they are is really hindering them right now.”

“What do you mean?” Seungmin asks.

He’s glad that Minho is in the loop, if he himself can’t be in it. Minho uses his power to manipulate probability to to make sure the wifi is always working in his favor. Seungmin once asked why Minho can’t use it to win the lottery, to which Minho replied wryly that the odds are too bad to work with.

“Because over the summer, people started speculating that like, _3racha_ was on energy,” Minho says.

“But didn’t 3racha become a thing before energy was even released?”

“Yeah. So people are guessing shit like 3racha was like, some sort of prototype project, or that 3racha managed to get ahold of energy before anybody else did.” Minho shrugs. “It’s definitely hurting their reputation, and these wannabe groups aren’t helping either.”

“ _2basco_ ,” Jeongin mumbles.

“Do _you_ think that 3racha is on energy?” Seungmin asks, curious.

“I mean, it isn’t my place to say,” Minho says. “I’m just here to observe. If I’m not wrong, though, 3racha’s been lying low for the past month or so—” A sudden crash stops Minho’s train of words. Somebody’s been thrown across the cafeteria.

In Calc AB that afternoon, Seungmin sees Jisung walk into the classroom in the corner of his eye, and for a second, he wishes they were still talking, so he can tell Jisung about 2basco. But he only tightens his grip around his pencil and stares down at the desk.

 

**[PAST]**

 

December of sophomore year is when 3racha first began to appear on search engines.

Superhero groups aren’t a new concept— the bigger districts have companies that train and put together very polished, very public teams of superheroes— but District 9 doesn’t have anything like that.

There is no warning of 3racha’s arrival. Just, one day, the train station catches on fire, but it manages to get put out before anybody gets hurt. Somebody who prioritizes getting a good candid over getting out alive gets a snapshot: three shadows against a backdrop of flames.

People speculate over whether it’s a one-time thing, but then two days later, a bank robbery gets halted by those three exact same silhouettes, and that’s enough. There’s a poll held on twitter for what the trio should be called: somebody suggests _3racha_ , and it catches wind. Then people come up with individual names. J.One. CB97. SpearB.

CB97’s power is the most obvious, from the burst pipes and puddles left in their wake, the power to manipulate water. It is reasonably certain that CB97 can control shadows. J.One— people don’t know. He just seems to be everywhere all at once. Flight or teleportation?

But even as the news sweeps through the district, life trundles on.

“You know what we should get? I don’t know, but not finals,” Jisung says, the weekend after 3racha’s debut. At this point, Seungmin hasn’t even heard of 3racha, since he’s never online.  “Like, I don’t remember _anything_ past yesterday.”

“Sands likes to make us suffer,” Seungmin says. But Jisung looks— really tired. The kind of tired that either comes with power exhaust or lack of sleep. Jisung’s practically falling asleep against the trunk of a tree. “Hey? Earth to Jisung?”

“Jisung to Earth,” Jisung says, rapidly blinking.

Seungmin won’t ask. He isn’t sure if he can call Jisung a _friend_ — they don’t talk outside of these volunteering sessions, but Seungmin can’t pretend he doesn’t look forward to coming to the preserve for reasons other than the preserve being damn gorgeous.

Today, they’re planting. Seungmin rakes aside leaves while Jisung stands there with a handful of seeds. When Seungmin’s cleared a sufficient amount of bare ground, Jisung scatters seeds onto the earth. They talk, but Jisung seems a lot more subdued than usual.

Seungmin doesn’t like that.

He thinks of how Jisung caught him off guard teleporting him up the tree, how the view was breathtaking, how he felt safe despite being so high-up. Seungmin never admitted it to Jisung, or even himself, but it was something he needed after his injury and the loss of his scholarship.

Seungmin wants to repay that debt. “Hey,” he says. “Jisung, close your eyes.”

Jisung obeys a little too easily, and Seungmin wonders if Jisung will fall asleep on his feet before he closes his _own_ eyes and focuses on the ground underneath him.

The conditions aren’t right— for one, it’s winter, and for two, the ground is frozen solid, but the seeds underneath his feet pulse with life, and the soil is good, medium-sized particles filled with nutrients. Seungmin chooses a few seeds that he intuitively knows will bloom with bright flowers.

Stems shoot up; yellow and pink and blue flowers unfurl. Seungmin gathers some in his hands. “Open your eyes,” he tells Jisung.

“Wh—” Jisung mutters. He really _had_ nearly fallen half-asleep. Then he spots the patch of flowers, incongruous with the snow and the barren landscape around them. “Whoa.”

Seungmin grins, making sure it’s mocking so he doesn’t come off _too_ sincere, and holds out his hasty bouquet of flowers. “For you,” he says, exaggerated.

Jisung takes it. “You never really showed me your power before,” he murmurs. “It’s so cool.”

Seungmin focuses on the plants on the ground and lets them wither and collapse, to their relief— it isn’t pleasant being out in the winter. “Yeah, figured, why not,” he says. The little show has better effect than he hoped— Jisung’s smiling idiotically at the blooms in his hands.

“I look really tired, don’t I?” Jisung says. “That’s why you’re being so nice.”

Seungmin would be offended, but Jisung isn’t wrong— Seungmin isn’t the kind of person to pull a stunt like this for no reason. “They’re just wildflowers,” Seungmin says. “I basically handed you a bunch of weeds.”

Jisung rolls his eyes. “Shut up.” Then, “I’m just, I’m really stressed out studying for finals. My parents are going to kill me if I don’t get a good grade…”

The grades on Seungmin’s finals don’t matter at all, not really, but Seungmin is still studying for some semblance of normalcy. “Finals are dumb,” Seungmin says. “I don’t think they prove anything.”

“Yeah, other than the fact you managed to like, swallow the textbook in your sleep,” Jisung says. “I’m really bad with tests in general, actually. I never have the patience for them. When I take the DSA next year, I’m gonna be so screwed.”

DSA— the District-Wide Standardized Assessment, spoken of with such fear and trauma. Seungmin wonders if he’ll even be _taking_ it. “I mean, I’m okay at it,” Seungmin says. “I kinda just turn filling the bubbles out into a game.”

Jisung considers this. “Huh. I’ll try that.”

“I mean, it’s the lamest game in the world, but whatever,” Seungmin says. “My friend, he can manipulate probability, so he says he’s just going to boost up the probability that he gets the right answer on the problems he guesses.”

“Oh my god, what I would give for a power like that right now,” Jisung says. “All I can do is teleport places. But I can’t teleport away from finals.”

“Uh, what am I gonna do, bribe the teachers with some roses?” Seungmin laughs.

“Who knows, maybe it’ll work.” Jisung stares again at the flowers in his hands, compass plant and common rose pink and wild blue sage, eyes going soft. “Thanks a lot for the flowers. Really.”

\---

It’s (of course) Minho that informs Seungmin of what 3racha is. And Seungmin might be bitter and cynical, but he can’t help but wonder just like everybody else: who _are_ they?

Jisung has teleported Seungmin up into a tree again, the two of them having gotten tired of brush-cutting for the time being. Finals loom the very next week, and Jisung says, “I swear, if we get those, like, boat and airplane problems in trig, I’m going to…”

“Glare very hard at the paper to no avail,” Seungmin finishes, and Jisung glares at him. “Don’t worry about it, I don’t know anything about trig either. I still sometimes forget that triangles, like, have three sides.”

“You do _not_.”

“Whatever,” Seungmin says. “I’m just going to write SOH CAH TOA on my forehead and hope for the best.”

“You won’t be able to see that,” Jisung says, and Seungmin crosses his arms. Who cares about the logistics of it, anyway? It’s trig finals; everybody’s going to go insane. He doesn’t want to talk about finals anymore, anyway.

In the end, he gives into the topic that’s crossed everybody’s tongues at least once these past few weeks, because maybe he wants Jisung’s opinion on it.

“What do you think of 3racha?” Seungmin asks.

Jisung tilts his head. “I think they’re humans.”

“I mean, I would hope they weren’t aliens.”

“No. I mean, well, yes. But, I just mean that under their masks, they’re just like, normal people, I guess. Like maybe… J.One… can teleport well, but doesn’t have his life together. You know?”

“Huh,” Seungmin says.

It’s an interesting take on it. Jisung has probably spent a lot of time thinking about this, and Seungmin wonders if it’s because Jisung wanted (wants?) to be a superhero himself or if he’s just caught up in the 3racha fervor like the whole rest of District 9. “So you’re on team teleportation, then?”

“What?”

“For J.One’s superpower.”

“Uh, duh,” Jisung says, sounding out a forced laugh. “I mean, teleportation for the win.”

“I don’t know, I’d say flight’s pretty cool,” Seungmin says, and smirks to Jisung’s scowl.

They sit up in the tree for awhile, and Seungmin swings his legs, not telling Jisung that he thinks J.One’s power is teleportation as well, simply because he doubts anybody can fly with the speed and precision that Jisung wields even as a civilian. Maybe because of this, J.One is his favorite out of the three unidentified figures that he knows nothing about.

“Are you going anywhere for winter break?” Jisung asks.

Absolutely not, although Seungmin knows that practically everybody else in Sands is driving or flying out to some other district. Last year, for Christmas, he and Felix went to the downtown of District 9, streets like veins across a pulsing heart, looking at the windows of shops they’d still be too broke to purchase from even if they won the lottery.

“Pluto.”

“Well, shit,” Jisung laughs. “If you aren’t too busy on your tiny but totally legitimate planet—”

“— Of course you subscribe to the idea that Pluto is still a planet—”

“Could you maybe come over to my place for a day or something?” Jisung asks, eyes glinting. “Hang out outside of the context of being environmental nerds?”

“ _You’re_ the environmental nerd here,” Seungmin says, perfectly aware that he’s the one who needs conditions to be right for plant growth, but he _is_ here for forced volunteer hours, after all. “I mean… I don’t know.”

It isn’t Jisung. It’s how the two of them sit on opposite sides of the lunch room, how Seungmin tries not to think about him at school, or any context outside of this.

It’s weird, but Seungmin doesn’t know how the two of them would be outside the context of _just_ the two of them, in a sprawling forest preserve that belongs more to plants than to humans. Maybe Seungmin likes Jisung a little more than _just friends_ should.

Felix and Jisung are friends, too, and Seungmin tries to never talk about Jisung. Because if he talks about Jisung, then Jisung is important, and Jisung can’t be important, and Felix has always been a little too observant for his own good.  

“My mom always makes too much dessert during the holidays,” Jisung says, and that seals the deal. Seungmin can sneak some back home later.

“I _guess_ I can pencil you in.”

\---

Seungmin brings it up that he’s going to a friend’s house as offhandedly as possible, but Felix seizes on it.

“Is this a _date_?” Felix asks, ducking when Seungmin shoves him.

“Shut up, you know him. Jisung would die of isolation if he had to be alone for more than two seconds,” Seungmin retorts, and Felix grins, and holds his hands up in defeat.

Felix doesn’t tease him too much, though. Neither of them prioritize romance, and Felix is the most aware that Seungmin won’t be at Sands the next year. So Felix doesn’t ask if Seungmin, for lack of better terms, _likes_ Jisung or whatever.

Not that Seungmin does.

“Date or not, you don’t go empty-handed,” his mom says, and gets a box of cookies out of the kitchen.

“It _isn’t_ a date,” Seungmin says, but then his mom gives him a look, like, _do you really want to explain the logistics of this to me_? Tree meows in agreement, and Seungmin sighs, taking the box of cookies.

They’re cheap cookies, brought from the convenience store. Jisung doesn’t know he’s a scholarship student, well, a lost-his-scholarship student, and Seungmin won’t tell him. But he won’t put unnecessary effort into hiding it, either.

Even though Jisung’s house doesn’t qualify for mansion status the same way some of the homes in this neighborhood do, it’s still at least thrice the size of Seungmin’s apartment complex. Seungmin blows on his hands, tries to toe snow off his sneakers, then rings the doorbell.

It’s Jisung’s mom that opens it. “Hey,” she says. “You must be Seungmin. Jisung has—”

Jisung seems to materialize out of nowhere— actually, maybe he does. Teleportation might be necessary under threat of parental embarrassment. “Hey, Seungmin,” Jisung says. “Dude, you’re like, _covered_ in snow.”

“That’s kind of what happens when you’re outside during winter,” Seungmin says, sarcastic, but not _too_ sarcastic, considering that he doesn’t want to look bad in front of Jisung’s mom. “Happy holidays,” he tells her, and holds out the cookies.

“Oh my god, they’re rainbow,” Jisung comments.

Seungmin searches Jisung’s face, his mom’s face, for any judgment at the yellow plastic packaging or the tacky font, but he can’t find any.

“Thank you so much, you’re so sweet,” Jisung’s mom says, and Seungmin manages to keep a poker face up as Jisung imperceptibly rolls his eyes. Yeah. _Sweet_ is not the first word anybody should use to describe him. “Here, I’ll have to give you some food to take home, too—”

“Um, no, thank you—”

“I insist,” she says, and Seungmin doesn’t argue any further. Seungmin takes off his shoes, then follows her and Jisung toward the kitchen, where she puts what seems to be an entire pound of food into a plastic bag, tying it off with a neat bow. “I’m going to go check some emails now. Have fun, you two.”

Jisung’s opened the packet of cookies, and he hands one to Seungmin. “So,” Seungmin says. He’s looking at the kitchen— it’s so _shiny_. “What’ve you been doing during winter break?”

It’s that classic conversation starter, so blatantly a conversation starter that it prevents talk more than encourages it, but Seungmin is nervous. He’s nervous in this house where he doesn’t feel like he belongs at all. “Sleeping, mostly,” Jisung says. “You?”

“Same, really. I’m also pretending school doesn’t exist.”

“Um, currently, it doesn’t,” Jisung says, then reaches over to tug his sleeve. “My mom got me this new game for Christmas. C’mon, let’s play.”

Seungmin follows Jisung up the stairs into a room that Seungmin presumes is his. It’s a comfortable sort of messy— there’s a sleeve hanging out of the cabinet, books scattered at the end of a bed, and a TV set up against one of the walls.

“Alright,” Jisung says, pressing a button so that the TV lights up.

Seungmin chews his lip. He’s only played video games maybe twice in his life, doesn’t even know how the controller works, and he panics as the screen flashes with a company logo and then changes to a pixelated landscape. Jisung maneuvers the controller with a practiced skill, selecting the _multiplayer_ option.

Seungmin hovers his fingers above the controller. Jisung looks at him, then says, “Have you never played this before?”

“No.” Seungmin decides he might as well say it— it’s going to be revealed in the near future, anyway. “I haven’t really used any controller before.”

“Oh, that’s fine, I can teach you,” Jisung says easily, going on a explanation about the buttons that Seungmin doesn’t get at all. After a minute, he realizes Seungmin’s blank-eyed gaze, and says, “Okay, uh. Just. Press X.”

Seungmin does, and the screen changes to a page where he can pick a character. “Choose any one, it doesn’t matter,” Jisung says, and Seungmin haphazardly pushes buttons until something happens.

Unsurprisingly, Seungmin is terrible at the game. It’s a competition where he and Jisung attempt to get to a checkpoint first while collecting coins and avoiding monsters. “Don’t you _dare_ go easy on me,” Seungmin warns, his character’s life bar flashing as he speaks.

“I won’t. Respect your opponents and all that, even if they can’t tell left from right.”

Seungmin probably isn’t too fun to play against, but Jisung doesn’t seem to mind, which is relieving. He actually manages to win a round because Jisung gets stuck and is unable to get out for a good minute.

There’s a bonus round where the two of them have to work together to get to the checkpoint, pushing boxes and buttons to alleviate each other’s obstacles and collecting a required amount of gems. Seungmin dies five times before he lets Jisung help his character. Helping involves Jisung hooking his chin on Seungmin’s shoulder and wrapping his fingers around the controller, easily navigating Seungmin through the pit.

Seungmin turns around to say something and badly misjudges where Jisung’s face is, to say the least. They are probably half a centimeter away from kissing.

Jisung springs away, wide-eyed, and Seungmin is about to laugh it off, but then, Jisung pulls his phone out of his pocket and adopts a frantic look on his face.

“I’m sorry, I have to go now,” he stammers, vanishing in a blur of color.

“What the hell?” Seungmin says, looking at where Jisung was, then at the TV screen, which is still playing the background music, level unfinished. He wonders if this is some kind of joke. He prays Jisung’s mom doesn’t walk into the room and find Seungmin alone.

Was Jisung really that freaked out?

Five minutes pass. Ten minutes. Seungmin decides to leave. He walks down the stairs, making sure that Jisung’s mom isn’t there, taking the plastic bag of food before heading out the door. An asshole move, but nothing compared to Jisung just ditching him.

He hands the plastic bag to his mom and says nothing about what had happened, only giving a vague, _it was fun_. There is only a weekend left before school, and he dodges Felix’s questions. Jisung and Felix are friends. Seungmin isn’t about to get between that.

When he gets back to school, he gets accosted by Jisung at the front door of the building. From the way Jisung is shivering, it looks like he’s been outside for a long, perhaps waiting for him. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “I just, a friend was at the mall—”

“Save it,” Seungmin says, and walks past him. Seriously. The mall?

Later in the day, he hears people talking about how a small-scale villain began to wreak havoc on the second floor of the local mall a few days ago. Seungmin doesn’t pay attention until he connects it to what Jisung said. About how there was a friend at the mall.

He spends the rest of the day with embarrassment smoldering under his skin.

 

**[PRESENT]**

 

Sometimes, Seungmin thinks about it, when he’s distracting in math class. Mrs. Moon talks about limits and asymptotes and Seungmin thinks about almosts. He wonders if Jisung has forgotten all about him.

Probably.

It’s a good thing Jisung sits behind him, so Seungmin never looks. But sometimes, he wants to know if Jisung is looking where he’s supposed to be looking, at the board, or looking at him. He doesn’t like that thought.

But that isn’t at the forefront of his mind, and Seungmin thinks that he’s doing relatively okay. His payment to Sands for September has been covered. He hasn’t lost his job at For You. He knows some of the material on the tests. Jisung is just a small blip on his radar.

What hits out of the blue is Jeongin showing up to school looking like he hasn’t slept in days.

“Whoa,” Seungmin says, to the bags underneath Jeongin’s eyes. He swears Jeongin didn’t look like this yesterday. Maybe he seemed a little tired, but nothing out of the ordinary. “Did you pull an all-nighter?”

“Hmm?” Jeongin mumbles. “Oh, yeah. Essay in history, you know.”

“Get some sleep tonight,” Seungmin says, unsettled. Jeongin usually— Jeongin usually doesn’t look like that.

At lunch, Jeongin nearly falls asleep in his food. Minho offers Jeongin a shoulder to sleep on, and Jeongin tries to decline before Minho forces his head into the crook between his arm and neck, and Jeongin’s eyes flutter shut.

“I didn’t know they were working the sophomores that hard,” Seungmin frowns. “I thought it was you seniors with your college apps—”

“Oh, shut up, not like you don’t look like this on a daily basis,” Minho says.

Yes, but Seungmin, on top of his lack of sleep, is dealing with power exhaust from the flower orders at For You. Jeongin, on the other hand, never uses his superpower. Seungmin actually doesn’t even know what Jeongin’s superpower even _is_.

When Seungmin asked, last year, Jeongin said, “Yeah, it’s the most useless thing ever. I haven’t touched it since, like, elementary school. Don’t ask.”

Seungmin doesn’t push farther. He himself gets weird looks when he says that his superpower is plant growth, so he can understand why Jeongin doesn’t want judgment.  

Jeongin doesn’t look any better the next day. Or the day after that. In fact, he seems to get worse, and Seungmin is worried. Call him paranoid, but it doesn’t look like regular lack of sleep. It looks like Seungmin’s power exhaustion, but intensified.

“Dude,” Minho says, at lunch, when Jeongin shows up and doesn’t even bother with food, resting his head on the table. “You need to get sleep.” Minho is usually lighthearted, but his tone for now is serious.

“I _am_ getting sleep,” Jeongin mumbles.

“You don’t look like it,” Seungmin says. Jeongin gives what might be a shrug. “Are you sick?”

“No, I’m not,” Jeongin snaps, pushing himself off the table and wincing as he does so. “Stop being a mom.”

“I’m not being a mom,” Seungmin automatically says, even though he kind of is. In his defense, Jeongin deserves some mom-ing right now. “Take a day off from school.”

“I can’t. You only get a certain number of days off on scholarship, remember?” Jeongin yawns, and Seungmin winces. Right. How could he forget, now that he’s attending as a regular student. “And you are like, so being a mom. When’s the next PTA meeting?”

It would be a good joke if the delivery weren’t so awful. Minho takes a bar of chocolate — _for emergencies_ , Seungmin remembers him once saying— from his backpack and hands it to Jeongin. “Eat.”

Jeongin doesn’t respond. He’s asleep.

\---

At For You, Hyunjin’s expression is troubled when he comes in for his weekly delivery.

“I’ll go get your package,” Seungmin says, about to head to the back. He isn’t the mood for niceties today, and he doesn’t think Hyunjin is, either.

“No, there’s no package today,” Hyunjin says, and Seungmin stops in his steps. “Um, can I get a flower?”

“Uh…” Seungmin frowns, thrown off by the sudden change in routine. “Sure. Do you want to look at like, our catalogue of bouquets, or…”

“Uh, no, I don’t have enough—” Seungmin could _swear_ that Hyunjin was going to say money, but that would be ludicrous. “No, um, I just want a single flower. Do you have anything that like, emphasizes healing, or is that flower language stuff just, uh—”

 _Bullshit? A marketing ploy?_ Hyunjin’s voice trails off, and Seungmin fills in for him. “No, the flower language stuff doesn’t really work. It’s all symbolism.”

“Okay. Yeah, I just, one of my friends is sorta sick,” Hyunjin says, sounding like he has no idea why he’s divulging this information, but just is. “So I just… you know.”

“Yeah. Uh, I hope your friend gets better.”

Hyunjin goes toward the shelves of the store, and Seungmin props his hands on his chin and waits for him to come back with his flower. What Hyunjin ends up getting is a single pretty pink flower the same shade as Jeongin’s shoes, wrapped in plastic.

“Thanks,” Hyunjin says, and walks out the store, cradling the flower between his hands.

“Huh,” Soyeon says, next to Seungmin. “Single flower. Interesting.”

Seungmin is absolutely not about to complain. He was really terrified Hyunjin was going to place an order for some kind of elaborate bouquet the size of Seungmin’s torso.

\---

Although Hyunjin doesn’t pull a stunt like that, somebody orders flowers for a birthday party. A very extravagant party, if the sheer size of the order is anything to go by. Seungmin’s getting an extra cut for this, but Seungmin isn’t going to lie and say he isn’t nervous.

“Yeah, uh, I’ll need some extra time tonight to have this ready,” he says. “It’s fine, I can close up for the day.”

Seungmin painstakingly begins to grow the kinds of flowers listed in the order, making sure there’s enough for Soyeon to work with when she crafts them into bouquets the next day. Roses. There is something about roses make them more exhausting than most flowers. It takes effort to make them look so pretty.

Seungmin means to close up, he really does, but he decides to just close his eyes for a little bit as he’s in the back room, hands covered with soil, one finger nicked from a stray thorn, and he falls asleep, not dreaming of anything.

When he wakes up, it’s dark. It’s dark, and something about the darkness isn’t right— Seungmin gets the sense he isn’t alone. When his eyes adjust, he thinks he makes out three shadows, and in Seungmin’s tired state, he panics.

He stands up, knocking into the light switch and flooding the room with brightness. The three figures whirl toward him, and Seungmin doesn’t think. Adrenaline courses through his veins, and he pours the remains of his energy into the soil beside him.

Roses erupt from the box, but they’d be hard-pressed to be called roses. Instead, they’re more like vines— there is no energy going to make the actual flowerheads. The stems wrap around the three figures, and Seungmin can hear one of them cry out in pain.

“What the hell?” Seungmin demands, voice a mixture of fear and confusion.

“Seungmin?”

And Seungmin _knows_ that voice, even if it’s muffled by a mask. That’s Han Jisung.

“Jisung?” he says in disbelief. A headache pulses through his temples, but he doesn’t register it.

“Oh my god,” one of the other people says, unable to move. Seungmin doesn’t know what to do. He slumps, falls to the floor, legs giving out from underneath him. He feels light, like a balloon, like he could pop if one of those stems were to hit him.

“This is a dream,” Seungmin mumbles, before he passes out again.

He wakes up with the feeling of water getting dumped on his face. A water bottle hovers stationary above his eyes before it falls to the floor. “Okay, okay, stay with us here,” this one guy says. “I just, I can’t help but ask, what were you doing back there—”

 _Oh,_ Seungmin thinks. _This must be 3racha_.

3racha don’t operate with superhero uniforms. The three people are just wearing masks. But this must be CB97, with the power to control water. Huh. What’s 3racha doing here?

“Shut up, 97, not the time, that’s my— friend,” Jisung grouses. “I can handle it from here. SpearB, can you, I don’t know, cut me free—”

“Just give me a second,” SpearB says. His voice is vaguely familiar. He’s managed to work a hand around the vines, and he gestures to his shadow. His shadow rises up, transforms into the shape of scissors, and tears its way through the stems.

“Alright, Seungmin, where do you live?” Jisung asks.

“What’s going _on_?” Seungmin demands. 3racha is in For You and Seungmin is tired out of his mind. Oh. And J.One happens to be Jisung, who Seungmin is too exhausted to be awkward around.

How did it never occur to him that J.One and Jisung were the same person? Jisung and J.One could both teleport, and Jisung was always too kind for his own good. Seungmin is an _idiot_.

It’s just that J.One always seemed untouchable, some mythical being, while Jisung was a high school student like Seungmin, confused about life and fearing what quiz the next day might bring. It’s hard to reconcile those two images into one.

“We can stay back and clean up, if need be,” CB97 offers. He asks Seungmin, “Hey, are you the only one in the store?”

“Just—” Seungmin sighs. “ _Don’t_ mess with the flowers in the backroom.” He spent so much time growing those. “Can I go back to sleep now?”

“Soon,” Jisung tells him, then grabs onto his hand. Seungmin looks dully at their interlocked fingers. _J.One is Jisung_. “Here, tell me your address. I’ll teleport you back home.”

Seungmin is about to comply before he yanks his hand away. “Wait,” Seungmin demands. “You have to promise me something.”

“What?”

“Later, you’ll give me an explanation.”

“I—”

“I think you kind of owe him one, as long as you don’t tell too much,” CB97 drawls. “Is that Seungmin, by the way? Like the Seungmin you talk about?”

“What other damn Seungmins do I talk about?” Jisung says, frustrated, at CB97, before addressing Seungmin again, who’s struggling with the effort of keeping his eyes open. “Hey. Hey, Seungmin, stay with me here. Fine, I promise I’ll explain, if you promise to not tell anyone who I am.”

“Okay.”

“Now what’s your address?”

Seungmin mumbles it out, and Jisung takes off his mask and slots their fingers together before teleporting them out of the shop. When Seungmin opens his eyes again, they’re in front of his door. “Thanks,” Seungmin mutters.

He’s barely touched the door when it flies open to reveal a frazzled Felix.

“Seungmin,” Felix says. “Seungmin, it’s _midnight_ , Mom’s catatonic, what the hell where were you—”

“I fell asleep at the shop,” Seungmin says. He must look like a mess. His body doesn’t even feel like his anymore. “I’m sorry.”

A small part of him feels guilty to have worried them. Seungmin’s phone broke, so they couldn’t even text or call him.

“Why are _you_ with him, Jisung?” Felix asks, glaring. Funny story, Felix is ridiculous. Technically, none of what happened last year was Jisung’s fault, but it didn’t stop Felix from boycotting him for, in his words, breaking Seungmin’s heart. “Somebody give me an explanation.”

“Trust me, I don’t have one,” Seungmin says dully. He sighs. “Can I finally fucking sleep now?”

\---

When he wakes up, he turns over and sees groggily that it’s noon. _But I have school_ , he thinks, before deciding that after last night, that isn’t first priority.

He can hear his mom moving a few feet away, and Seungmin decides that he isn’t ready to face her yet. He closes his eyes instead and rewinds the events of what happened last night. It’s blurry. He remembers falling asleep after growing hundreds of flowers. He remembers opening his eyes to three shadows, panicking, and shooting vines at them.

3racha was in the shop. They were so surprised— they probably weren’t expecting Seungmin to be in there.

And oh, J.One and Jisung are the same person. Seungmin was only thinking of sleep last night, since he was so exhausted, but now, he’s awed at how stupid and compliant he was, just letting J.One— Jisung— teleport him home. How is he going to explain that?

Tree jumps onto his stomach and curls up in a ball. Seungmin wishes he were a cat right now, but he supposes that Felix would get the answers out of him even if he were.

He remembers making Jisung promise him an explanation. Seungmin’s mouth curves into a grim smirk— at least _some_ part of himself was on autopilot. He remembers Jisung making him promise to keep his alter-ego a secret in return.

There is one thing that irritates his mind, like a grain of sand in an oyster. Last night, he had found SpearB’s voice familiar, but couldn’t place why. His mind sharpens on the detail before he realizes where he’s heard it before. SpearB is Seo Changbin.

No fucking way. At least two-thirds of 3racha, the heroes of the city, are just high-schoolers at Sands Academy trying not to let their GPAs fall too far.

“Seungmin,” his mom says, shaking his arm, and Seungmin pretends to flutter his eyes awake. His mom doesn’t look pissed-off. Just angry. Maybe a little sad. “Time for breakfast. Well, lunch, actually.”

Seungmin peels himself off the mattress. His head throbs, and his whole body hurts. “Thanks,” he says, voice hoarse.

“I called you out of school for the day,” his mom tells him. “Now. _Please_ tell me, what were you doing so late?”

She’s taken a day off from work, then. Seungmin doesn’t remember the last time the two of them ate lunch together— she’s almost never around. He’s sorry he’s too busy making up an explanation to enjoy this.

“There was a huge order for flowers,” Seungmin fumbles. “Short-term. Trust me. I got a lot of money for it and everything.” His mom doesn’t look happy about that. “I don’t know, I just, I got tired. And I fell asleep. It won’t happen again.”

His mom can’t even mom him. Both of them know that Seungmin can’t go to Sands unless he keeps the job at the flower shop. “Why was it that boy who teleported you home?” she asks, and here is the part that Seungmin really, really doesn’t know how to explain.

J.One has kept his identity a secret for this long, and it isn’t Seungmin’s place to tell. “I guess he was taking a walk or something, he lives close. And then, I’m not sure. I was too tired to remember. He might have recognized me through the window or something?”

 _Buy it_ , he thinks. _Please_. He has never been too good at lying. “Okay,” she says, after a long pause. “I’m glad he got you home, I guess. Although I’m not happy about the idea of strange boys teleporting you places—”

“He’s a friend,” Seungmin says. Or. Well. _Was_ a friend. Same difference.

The real ordeal here is to lie to Felix. But he doesn’t end up having to do that; when Felix walks through the door after school, he immediately says, “Jisung said he was talking a walk when he saw you passed out in For You.”

They came up with the same cover story. It makes both of them look like idiots, but Jisung’s identity will stay a secret. “Yeah,” Seungmin says. “That’s about it.”

Felix’s eyes narrow. “You sure?”

Seungmin looks at Tree, who’s perched on the couch next to him. He doesn’t need to speak cat to know Tree is saying, _you’re on your own_. Felix has always been perceptive. “I was asleep, I wouldn’t be the best person to ask,” he says. “Seriously. No big deal.”

“You were so tired you _forgot to come home_.”

That’s true, but that’s nothing compared to how Jeongin’s doing right now. “Junior year’s stressful.”

“I’m not even going to— you know what,” Felix sighs. “Can I like… help you in some way? Or anything?”

“Just trust me,” Seungmin says, although at this point, he isn’t even sure if he trusts himself. Felix turns away, and Seungmin thinks that even if he’s swallowed the lie on the surface, his subconscious knows differently. The two of them haven’t lied to each other before, and this instance reeks of falseness.

\---

Seungmin doesn’t go to sit in his regular spot in the cafeteria the next day. Instead, he navigates the tables, self-conscious, in an attempt to find Jisung. When Seungmin sees him, he says, “Hey, Jisung. Wanna eat outside?”

“Who’s that?” a guy next to Jisung says, and Seungmin keeps his hands clenched tight.

“A friend,” Jisung says, then turns to Seungmin. “Sure. Let’s go.”

The two of them walk out of the school in silence. Juniors are allowed off-campus privileges, and Seungmin and Jisung walk aimlessly about the sidewalk until they get a sufficient distance from the school.

Jisung grabs his hand and teleports them to a park.

It’s awkward. There’s nothing else to it— this was easier when Seungmin was so tired that he barely had a grip on reality. Now, he’s painfully aware of how things had ended last year, how Jisung’s mouth is set in a tight line, how they used to talk so easily.

“You covered for me with Felix,” Jisung says. “Thanks.”

“No big deal. It wasn’t my secret to snitch,” Seungmin says. “But that’s not what I’m here for. You promised me an explanation.”

Jisung crosses his arms. “I’ll explain to you anything that is mine to tell. Some stuff… CB97 and SpearB—”

“Seo Changbin.”

“Ah. You figured that out too,” Jisung says. “So. Ask away.”

All Seungmin thinks is that Jisung looks resigned. His arms are crossed, and he’s staring at the sidewalk. Not like one-third of the superhero team of District 9. “When’d you guys decide to become 3racha?” Seungmin asks.

“Oh. That wasn’t even our decision,” Jisung says. “The first time, at the burning train station… CB97 and Spear— _Changbin_ — and I… we were only wearing face masks because CB was sick. There was screaming from down below so we just acted.”

“You guys all practice your superpowers? No supplements involved?”

“Changbin’s naturally a genius with shadow control, and with additional practice, he got even better,” Jisung says wryly. “CB watched a show when he was about eleven where one of the main characters could, quote, _waterbend_ , decided to try it out, and liked it. He’s always tired, anyway, so the power drainage doesn’t hurt him much.”  

“And then you guys just all became 3racha.”

“The train station was an accident. But somebody took a photo of us,” Jisung says, and Seungmin remembers that, that iconic photo of their three silhouettes with a backdrop of flames. “It went viral. People thought we were superheroes. And we thought, you know, just, _why not_?”

Of course it’s something so simple. “My friend says you guys haven’t been as active recently. Is it because of the energy thing? And like, groups like 2basco?”

“2basco. I guess you saw that too?” Jisung laughs, but it sounds more pained than anything. “I mean, partially. Those rumors hit hard. But honestly, it’s also just because the three of us, we’ve lost some of our idealism. Like, in those comics you read when you’re younger, the superheroes save the world. But in real life… we’re not saving the world.”

“Aren’t you guys stopping robberies and assaults and arson and all that?”

“Yeah, but that’s… ” Jisung says. “You don’t get it.”

Seungmin raises an eyebrow. “Not all of us can be superheroes.”

“No— I just—” Jisung shakes his head. “When you… gave me your reason for turning me down. That hit me hard. Because something was wrong, but there wasn’t anything that I could fight. Our school is just fucked up, taking away your scholarship like that.”

“I really can’t play baseball anymore,” Seungmin says. The words taste like acid. “And you didn’t need to save me, you know. Just cause you… liked me.”

“Liked,” Jisung mutters. “Right. I’m really happy you’re back, by the way. What changed?”

Jisung’s a good person, being happy Seungmin is back even though they don’t speak anymore. Seungmin doesn’t get much of what just came out of Jisung’s mouth, about how they can’t save the world or anything, but he himself has never had much of a superhero complex anyway.

“For You pays me a lot to grow all those damn flowers,” Seungmin says, curt. “Which, speaking of, _what the hell_ were you guys doing there two nights ago?”

“We were… investigating.”

“Real specific.” Jisung says nothing. “Elaborate.”

“Look, there was just… some suspicious activity going on. But you know, all we saw when we came was you.” Jisung isn’t telling him the truth. He’s a bad liar. No wonder Felix had been so hard-pressed to believe him yesterday. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry about it?” Seungmin says, incredulous. “For You is my job.”

“Right, and it’s going to continue being your job,” Jisung says, which is really cryptic. Seungmin opens his mouth to ask— he doesn’t even _know_ what he’s going to ask, but Jisung says, “Look, let’s get back to school, alright?”

He grabs Seungmin’s hand, and Seungmin feels the ground drop out from underneath him before it remeterializes under his feet. Jisung lets go of his hand and walks back inside, head down low. Seungmin’s curiosity has by no means been sated, but pushing for more doesn’t seem worth it. That conversation was awkward and painful for both parties involved.

 

**[PAST]**

 

“You know what I like about the preserve?” Seungmin says. “It has good soil.”

Jisung lets out a peal of laughter. “What?”

“It makes using my power easier,” Seungmin says. “Like, if the soil is good, I don’t get as tired. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“No, I get that,” Jisung says. “My power… it depends a lot on like, distance, and the amount of objects between me and my end destination, and how clearly I know where I want to go. It would make sense for your power to rely somewhat on the soil.”

“ _Thank_ you,” Seungmin says, gratified.

“My friend Woojin is taking Environmental Science,” Jisung says. “He told me their class is growing stuff without using soil.”

“What? _No_ way. Where do the roots go, then?”

“I don’t know, ask him!” Jisung defends. “Anyway, I might have remembered wrong… I don’t know. But yeah, he said that they grow vegetables and flowers in these giant plastic towers. You should check it out.”

Seungmin takes that suggestion, solely because he’s curious. He looks up Environmental Science in the directory and goes to classroom 419 after his last period. Even looking through the door fascinates him. Jisung’s remembered correctly: there are indeed giant plastic towers. There’s also a mini-greenhouse, pots placed under fluorescent lights.

“Hey,” someone says, and Seungmin looks up. “Are you Seungmin?”

“Um,” Seungmin says, forgetting his own identity under Woojin’s gaze. There’s something about how Woojin holds himself, confident, that’s a little intimidating. Seungmin feels like Woojin would have a firm handshake.

“I’m Woojin. Jisung told me about you,” Woojin says, and Seungmin _doesn’t_ wonder what Jisung said. Jisung talks a lot— Seungmin might inevitably pop up as a topic. “He said you’ve got a cool superpower.”

 _That’s_ a strange evaluation. “I really don’t,” Seungmin says, recovering his wit. “He just said your class grows plants without soil, and I wanted to check that out to see… how that worked…”

Seungmin trails off. He definitely sounds lame right now. He doesn’t feel lame talking to Jisung, but then again, Jisung is a little lame himself, societally speaking, volunteering at the forest preserve every weekend.

But Woojin says, “Oh, yeah, it’s pretty cool. Do you want to see my jalapeño?”

“Alright?”

Woojin walks over to one of the towers, and Seungmin follows. He focuses on the plants and tries to focus on the roots. As Jisung says, there’s no soil. There’s something, but it isn’t soil, and Seungmin furrows his brow as he tries to figure out what the strange substance is.

“Here it is,” Woojin says cheerfully, and Seungmin looks. Woojin’s jalapeño has several white flowers and one small green pepper. It’s cute. That’s all Seungmin can say about it. All the plants are pretty cute, actually, living in the grow tower like it’s an apartment.

“I don’t even like jalapeños that much, but this is like, my child,” Woojin says.

Seungmin smiles a little. “What’s the stuff you guys use, instead of soil?” he asks. “Because I can tell you guys use something…”

“Crap, I forgot… just gimme a second—” Woojin snaps his fingers. “Vermiculite! That’s what it is. This whole thing is called a hydroponic tower. At the end of the semester, we’re gonna harvest the vegetables and have a salad day. My friend Jungwoo’s bringing croutons.”

“Nice,” Seungmin says, ignoring the words _end of the semester_. “Okay, I’m just gonna go now. Thanks for showing me.”

“No problem. You could stop by again sometime,” Woojin says. “I stay in this classroom a lot after school, actually, because of this project I’m doing— yeah.”

Seungmin doesn’t take Woojin up on the offer until a few days later, not wanting to seem too eager, but when he does, he flips through the textbooks at the front of the room, trying to connect the science to his power, and stays until the last bus reading about soil conservation and agriculture.

\---

“I went to see the giant plastic towers you were talking about,” Seungmin says, while he and Jisung are crouched low on the ground, pulling up garlic mustard weeds. “They don’t use soil.”

“ _Told_ you,” Jisung says, smirking, like he hadn’t doubted his memory last week.

Seungmin rolls his eyes, grabbing another handful of weed. He knows what the soil is called now. Loam. A mixture of particle sizes, which makes it nice for roots. “I ran into the Woojin you were talking about. He’s really nice.”

“Oh my god, yeah, Woojin? He’s so nice. I love him,” Jisung says. “I mean, everybody loves him. It’s just really hard not to.”

He’s like Felix, then. “Good to know.”

“I had, like, the worst crush on him when I first met him,” Jisung groans. “For like, a couple of months. It was a dark time, but like, it proves I’ve got good taste.”

Seungmin eyes Jisung’s pants with pretend distaste. “Uh, those khakis say differently.”

Jisung shoves him. “Shut _up_ ,” he says, although Seungmin couldn’t have said anything else— he knows nothing about fashion, nothing about name brands. “Anyway, I stopped liking him after I found out he had a thing for someone else. He won’t tell me _who_ though. What are we in, elementary school?”

“Why are you invested?”

“Because friends tell each other these things,” Jisung says. “It’s fine, I don’t care too much anymore. I stopped liking him a while ago.”

“Good call, he seems out of your league.”

Jisung shoves Seungmin again, harder this time, and Seungmin topples over for a second before regaining his balance. Seungmin knows why he’s teasing Jisung this much, more so than normal. Maybe the idea of Jisung liking Woojin doesn’t sit too well with him, even if that’s a petty and random thought.

“Do you like anyone, Kim Seungmin?”

With his full name, too. There’s something about the use of a full name that powerful. Seungmin chews his lip.

He knows what his answer should be. No. Absolutely not. He isn’t going to be at this school next year, a reality he still hasn’t quite looked in the face yet, and he is absolutely not he kind of person to just go about falling for people. He’s smarter than that.

He rebounds the question. “Do _you_ like anyone, Han Jisung?”

“I asked you first,” Jisung says. “But yeah. I do.”

Seungmin really tries to hold it back. He really, really does.

“Who?”

Jisung grins at him. “Why are you invested?”

\---

At Sands Academy, kids pick their classes for the next year the week after spring break.

Seungmin hangs out in Room 419 every other day now, reading textbooks. “Hey,” Woojin says. “You should take Environmental Science next year. You know, one, so you can get out of Physics, and two, because you seem to like it.”

And _that’s_ how it hits. Sophomore year is going to end, and after that, Seungmin won’t be going to Sands anymore. He’ll be going to the local school, no Felix, no Jisung, no Jeongin, no Minho.

His local school isn’t going to have environmental science. Those grow towers look way too expensive, as do the textbooks.

He’s not going to grow jalapeño, or tomato, or lettuce, or whatever, in those little squares of vegemite, vines curling around the hydroponics, the smooth sound of water trickling down onto the leaves. He isn’t going to get to learn about biodiversity loss or the shitty companies that control the GMO trade or the aggressive corruption in the mining industry. He isn’t going to do labs where somebody knocks over the beak of soil and someone yells _oh shit_ at least one time.

And that’s stupid, because it was a dead end when his elbow gave out. He _knew_ that. He knows that.

Woojin is waiting for an answer. “Right,” Seungmin says. “Yeah.”

A blue haze hangs over Seungmin’s mind during spring break. He lies on the ground, Tree curled on his stomach for company. Sometimes, Felix lies down on the ground and joins him. Felix gets it. “I could quit Sands with you.”

The sadness is replaced by anger for a moment. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says, getting up. “Don’t you fucking _dare_.”

A selfish part of him says, _please_. But that part of him is almost nonexistent. He loves Felix too much to ever do something like that to him.

\---

An hour left, and his forty hours of community service will be completed. Seungmin blinks dully. Go back to the forest preserve one last time, he thinks. Talk to Jisung one last time.

He doesn’t plan on saying goodbye to Jeongin and Minho, and he doesn’t plan on saying goodbye to Jisung, either. He hates goodbyes.

Seungmin wonders if Jisung would really care if Seungmin dropped out of his life. After all, Jisung is just friendly to everyone, and Seungmin is— Seungmin. The two of them only ever really talk at the forest preserve, and after that one disastrous meet-up during winter break, Jisung hasn’t asked him to hang out.

“I hope we have a class together next year,” Jisung says, and Seungmin grits his teeth. “We can partner up on everything.”

“Alright, but I’m not doing all the work,” Seungmin says, on autopilot.

“You have _so little faith_ in me,” Jisung says. “I totally wished we had a class together this year, but Sands is just so rude.”

This hurts. Fuck.

“Anyway, so, funny story, over spring break, I was hanging out with my friend Changbin,” Jisung says. “And we, like, made a bet with each other. We were at the arcade and we said that if I got more points, he would go get a tattoo, and we said if he got more points, well…”  

“Hold up,” Seungmin says, jolted out of his depression for the time being. “Just casually get a tattoo?”

“He actually wants a tattoo,” Jisung says airily. “I’m just enabling him.”

“Your friend’s crazy,” Seungmin mutters. He can’t imagine getting a tattoo He hasn’t seen anything he’s liked enough to permanently put on his skin yet. “But, if he got more points…?”

“Ah, well, you’ll see,” Jisung says, and laughs. His laugh is extremely nervous, and Seungmin is automatically a little suspicious. “Uh, but yeah, he got more points. I swear he cheated, he sent his little shadow things—”

“What?”

“Nothing. Point was the whole place was rigged. Okay, you know what, I’m just stalling at this point.” Jisung smiles, tight. “Since he won, I have to ask the person I like out. So, Kim Seungmin. Will you go out with me?”

Seungmin just _stares_ , uncomprehending, and then when he registers what Jisung says, his heart shatters. This is just too unfair.

Truth is, he would like to say yes. In another world, he would. But in this one, he never even let himself fall.

“No.”

“Oh, well, that’s okay,” Jisung says. But he’s a bad liar, and the hurt and disappointment on his face is plain as day. “No big deal. Let’s just stay friends, then.”

“No, we can’t do that either.”

It’s like ripping off a bandaid, except the bandaid is three miles long and has been sitting there for months. Jisung recoils like he’s been physically punched. “I swear I… I can get over it. What—”

“Jisung,” Seungmin says. “I’m not going to be at Sands next year.”

“You _what_?”

“I was here on a sports scholarship, but I lost it because I tore my elbow up,” Seungmin says, his arm twinging in phantom pain. “Sands let me stay here to finish off the rest of the year given I do forty hours of community service. That’s why I’m even here in the first place. But I won’t be here next year.”

“They can’t just do that.”

Seungmin has to laugh, because of course they can. “This place is expensive as hell,” he says. “And they’re the ones with the money. Not me. They can do whatever they want.”

“But you… you’re…”

“They have absolutely no incentive to let me stay,” Seungmin says. “My standardized test scores are shit. My grades are mediocre. The only thing that had ever set me apart was baseball, and I lost that.”

“Shut up, that absolutely isn’t true,” Jisung says, angry. “You’re hardworking and funny and you put a bunch of thought into plants, don’t even pretend like you don’t—”

“Everybody’s got a goddamn personality and superpower, I’m not special for that,” Seungmin snaps, cutting him off. “It just _doesn’t fucking work out_ sometimes, okay? You absolutely don’t get it. You don’t get that sometimes you don’t have the option.”

Jisung seems to be about to say something else, but then his shoulders slump.

“You’re right. I don’t.”

It hurts _worse_ to hear him say that, because maybe Seungmin might have hoped that Jisung’s eternal optimism would come through, shine light on some solution he hasn’t bothered to consider, but Jisung’s giving up with him.

It’s supposed to be how it is, but it hurts.

“Can we at least stay in touch?” Jisung says, soft.

“My phone broke.”

Seungmin can see the wheels in Jisung’s brain spin, futile, trying to come up with some other way. But of course there is none. The two of them are never going to work out, anyway, even if Seungmin does have a functional phone.

Jisung is destined for _places_. Far-away places, good places, places Seungmin has no hopes of reaching. Seungmin can tell just from the way Jisung holds himself, the confidence that he’s got the ability to change the world. And Seungmin doesn’t grudge him that at all, but there isn’t much to do about the bitter taste in his mouth.

Seungmin doesn’t expect this to hurt so much.

“You’re one of the best people I’ve ever met, you know. I’m glad… I at least got a chance to meet you,” Jisung finally says. “Listen, I might start crying and I don’t want you to have to deal with that, so I’m just gonna… go now. Okay? Goodbye.”

And he vanishes. Seungmin _hates_ goodbyes.

 

**[PRESENT]**

 

Seungmin thinks that if one considers how that fiasco holds down, one has to wonder why Felix holds a grudge against Jisung.

Theoretically, now, Seungmin and Jisung _could_ be friends again. They have a class together, like Jisung had hoped for, and they’ve spoken to each other. They’ve even tag-teamed in lying to Felix, which makes Seungmin’s insides squirm.

It isn’t that easy, though. The two of them have broken. When Seungmin looks at Jisung, he just sees the sharp edges, the afterimage of hurt and disillusionment.

Seungmin decides not to bother Jisung about his other identity or whatever Jisung was doing in the store. He has no time to worry about it, anyway— the next day, he’s peeling himself off the mattress, rubbing the exhaustion out of his eyes, and heading off to school.

He meets up with Jeongin at the front entrance, and— holy shit.

Jeongin isn’t tired anymore. No, _tired_ isn’t a word to describe him. Neither is _exhausted_. The only word, really, is sick. He’s sitting with his back against a tree, a notebook open across his lap, coughing into his fist. His entire face is pale.

“Good morning,” he says to Seungmin, voice thin.

Seungmin puts a hand against his forehead. “Dude, you’re burning up,” he says. Shit, how was Jeongin yesterday, when Seungmin was at home?

“I already stayed home yesterday, it’s fine,” Jeongin mumbles, gestures at the notebook on his lap. “I’m just… catching up on notes…”

Seungmin grits his teeth. He, unfortunately, has no room to talk, when he passed out in For You a few days ago. He just sits down next to Jeongin, cross-legged, and catches eye of a flower around his wrist. A bit withered, about the same pink as his shoes.

Seungmin’s brows furrow. He lasers his senses on the bloom. It feels— rushed. Unnatural. The tell-tale sign of his own power.

“Did Hyunjin give that to you?” Seungmin asks.

“Huh? Oh… yeah…” Jeongin says, looking at the flower on his wrist. “He… shouldn’t be buying me stuff, really, when he’s so broke. But what can you do.”

“What? You’ve got it wrong, Hyunjin isn’t broke.”

“What do you know— wait. How do you… how do you know Hyunjin?” Jeongin says. His eyes are feverish, glazed.

How does _Jeongin_ know Hyunjin? They must be pretty good friends, if Hyunjin is giving Jeongin flowers. And what does Jeongin mean, Hyunjin is broke? Hyunjin comes to For You all the time, and that place is pretty expensive.

“We should get to class…” Jeongin mumbles.

He tries to stand up and stumbles, crashing to the ground. Seungmin can see sweat beading along his hairline, his body slightly shivering in the wind. Jeongin pushes himself up onto his palms, and Seungmin can see the resignment in his eyes. “I’m not going to be able to get to class today, am I.”

Seungmin doesn’t even know what to say.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Jeongin mutters. “I think it’s because…” the words suddenly dry up, like a hand has zipped his mouth shut. His eyes suddenly focus, urgent.  “Listen. You need to take my bag.”

“Why?”

“You need to.”

Seungmin has so many questions, but he just takes the bag from Jeongin’s shoulders. It’s heavy, loaded with textbooks from all the classes he’s taking. “Okay—”

“Excuse me, the bell’s about to ring,” a teacher says, coming over, before he sees the state Jeongin is in, Seungmin’s fearful expression. His voice softens. “Young man, you need to go to the nurse.”

Jeongin doesn’t say anything. He sits limply on the ground like a rag doll. “You go to class,” the teacher says to Seungmin. “I’ll get him to the nurse’s office.” Seungmin has no choice but to comply, taking Jeongin’s bag and walking to first period.

The day passes by a haze as he wonders what’s up with his friend. When he finally gets back to his apartment at eight, his mind feels like it’s been wrung through the washer. Tree greets him by jumping onto Jeongin’s bag, unfamiliar to her, and Seungmin laughs, weak. “That’s my friend’s. He’s sick.”

Tree frowns as much as a cat can frown and paws at it. She focuses her attention on the flap on the side, not budging when Seungmin tries to pull her away. She continues pawing, meowing with something that sounds distinctly like distress, and Felix walks over.

“Something’s bothering her,” Felix says. “What—”

He kneels down, pulling the side flap open, and Tree allows him. Felix pulls out a couple of gum wrappers, a stubby pencil, and a plastic bag with a pill in it. Seungmin’s brows knit. Correct him, but that looks like—

“ _Seungmin_ ,” Felix says, voice low. “How do you have energy?”

“I what?” Seungmin says, although he heard perfectly. His mind races. No, not why does _he_ have energy. Why does Jeongin have energy? Jeongin doesn’t even use his superpower, and there’s no way he can afford this shit. “No, it isn’t mine.”

 _Take my bag_. Supplements are technically illegal. Was Jeongin scared somebody would find this?

“Right, the bag isn’t yours,” Felix says. He looks at the pill, then at Seungmin. “Dude, what’s going on?”

“I…” Seungmin shakes his head. “It’s my friend’s. Don’t worry about it.”

Felix crosses his arms. “Okay, so you’re allowed to freak out just for associating for Changbin—” _SpearB_ , Seungmin thinks — “but I’m not allowed to ask you why you got teleported home at midnight or how you’ve got energy?”

“Look, I’m figuring it out,” Seungmin says. “Just don’t tell Mom.”

“You’re unbelievable,” Felix finally says, incredulous.

He stalks off toward the kitchen. Seungmin grits his teeth and puts the plastic bag back in Jeongin’s bag, then places the bag up on a shelf, out of Tree’s reach. Tree meows. “Oh, shut up,” Seungmin mutters.

\---

Jeongin isn’t at school the next day, or the day after that.

At home, Felix is giving him the silent treatment. The portion of Seungmin’s day that he’s starting to look forward to the most, then, is work at For You. He’s waiting for Hyunjin to come back so he can possibly get some answers.

Seungmin doesn’t have to wait for long. When Hyunjin walks through the door, toward the counter, Seungmin says sweetly, “I think there’s something wrong with your order today. Can you come with me to the back?”

Apprehension flashes across Hyunjin’s face. “Yeah, of course. What’s wrong with it?”

“Just follow me,” Seungmin says, and walks off into the backroom, Hyunjin behind him. Once they’re safely in there, Seungmin hisses, “Do you know what’s up with Jeongin?”

Seungmin can’t peg Hyunjin down. He’s dressed smartly, and he’s tall enough to be a university student— that was what Seungmin had assumed of him at first. “You know Jeongin?” Hyunjin finally says. “Do you know…”

“I don’t know. I’m hoping _you_ know.” Seungmin sighs, then takes a gamble. “How good of friends are you with him?”

“He’s my best friend.”

Damn. No hesitation to that answer. “Do you know what energy is?”

“Yeah,” Hyunjin says, slow.

“Do you know how Jeongin could’ve gotten energy?

A million things flash across Hyunjin’s face. “No way he has energy,” Hyunjin says, voice confused and disbelieving, but Seungmin’s dead serious expression must convince him. “Take your shift off. Can you do that?”

“What? No, of course I—”

“Just ask your coworker to cover for you or something,” Hyunjin says. “I’m time crunched, I don’t know how else to talk to you.”

He walks out of the back room. Seungmin considers— he’s already fulfilled all the flower orders for today, and he wants answers so badly it’s almost a physical craving. He follows Hyunjin out, says to Soyeon, “Can you cover for me today?”

She eyes him with an indecipherable expression. “Alright,” she says, and he thanks her and jogs out the door.

Seungmin follows Hyunjin out to the parking lot, and Hyunjin silently motions to the passenger door of one of the cars. Seungmin considers for a second how bad of an idea this is before getting in. Hyunjin walks around and gets into the driver’s side, putting his package between them and revving up the engine.

“You’ve got to have this wrong,” Hyunjin says. “He hasn’t used his power since fifth grade.”

“How do you know that?”

“We used to go to the same elementary school. He has the power of invisibility, can turn himself and other things invisible. Kids would bully him and he’d fade out,” Hyunjin says. “In fifth grade, he decided to stop doing that forever. It’s a pride thing for him now.”

That’s cool; Seungmin admires that, but this only confuses him further. “I swear he had energy in his backpack.”

“I can’t explain why.”

Seungmin racks his brains, and surprisingly, something _does_ come up.

The first day of school. Taehyun forcing the words into Seungmin’s mouth. Jeongin suddenly disappearing. Taehyun stumbling, pushed by some invisible force.

Seungmin asking why the hell a burrito disappears at lunch. Minho saying, huh, what? Jeongin forgiving him the next day. Scenes flash across Seungmin’s mind, a slideshow that’s over in a second. “No, I’m almost certain that Jeongin’s used his power at least once,” Seungmin says. “On the first day of school.”

“No way.”

“When Jeongin was so tired, he seemed like he had power exhaustion,” Seungmin says. “I know what that’s like, because I, uh, have it all the time. But he seemed way _worse_ than me.”

“Why didn’t he tell me that?” Hyunjin asks, then lets out a bitter laugh. “I mean, I suppose I have no room to talk. I’m delivering it. Energy, I mean.”

“You what?”

“Open the package.” Seungmin does. Inside the box, there aren’t chocolates at all. There are envelopes with lumps in them like a small bottle of pills. “Our family’s financial situation isn’t too good. And I thought, you know, energy’s illegal, but it isn’t _hurting_ anyone.”

A couple of things click into place for him. No wonder 3racha was investigating For You— it’s secretly some kind of supplement distribution hub, and Seungmin had no idea. _I want you to keep your job_ , Jisung has said. Seungmin shakes his head.

“Right, my friend told me that all over the internet, the general consensus by scientists is that the pills are harmless, and a lot of people are pushing to get it legalized,” Seungmin says, voice surprisingly steady given the amount of new information he’s trying to digest. “I mean, people in my school use them, and they’re doing just fine.”

“I just want to know why Jeongin has them.”

“I do, too. And I want to know if they’re the reason he’s sick.”

“You look a little sick yourself, with how tired you are,” Hyunjin says. “What superpower do you have?”

“I can grow plants. You?”

“Technopathy. I can manipulate tech.”

“That’s pretty cool.”

“I find it fun, but I don’t have many uses for it. You work at a flower shop, though, must take a lot out of you?” Hyunjin guesses. Seungmin nods. “Well, you can take a nap while I’m making deliveries, I guess.”

Seungmin wants to keep his eyes open, but at the word _nap_ , his eyelids automatically droop. Hyunjin turns the radio on to some soft rock station, and despite how Seungmin barely knows him, it’s nice to have someone on his side, tied together by concern for a mutual friend and the sobering need to make money.

It’s nice, and despite how Seungmin has just learned that his workplace is nothing like what it seems and how confused he is in general, the movement of the car lulls him to sleep.

When he wakes up, it’s to Hyunjin shaking his shoulder. “Where do you live? I’ll drop you off.”

Seungmin hesitates a moment before giving him the address, and Hyunjin keys it into his GPS. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” Hyunjin mumbles. “I need to know why he’s on energy, if he’s sick because of it. I can’t… you have to understand. I’d be giving people something that…”

“No, yeah, I understand,” Seungmin says. “I want to get to the bottom of this, too.”

“How can I contact you if I find something out?” Hyunjin says. “You got a phone or anything?”

Seungmin shakes his head. “I mean, there’s the flower shop,” Seungmin says. “And you now know where I live, so there’s that, too. My apartment number is 325. Just knock.” It occurs to him a bit too late that he hasn’t known Hyunjin for that long. He can only hope now that they can trust each other.

“Jeongin’s told me about you. He really cares about you, although I doubt I’m supposed to tell you that.” Seungmin laughs, and Hyunjin decelerates the car to a stop. “Alright, we’re here. Take care.”

“You too.”

\---

Two days pass. Seungmin researches energy on his school-issued laptop; he doesn’t expect much, and he doesn’t get it. Scientists still find nothing but positive effects. He shuts the windows and tries to do his math homework.

He can’t shake off the feeling that energy and Jeongin’s illness are connected, though. Seungmin knows what power exhaustion is like— he lives with it on a daily basis, and Jeongin looks like he has some kind of extreme version of it. Seungmin actually debates on comparing notes with Jisung. He knows that 3racha must be investigating the same issue, or some vein of it.

It’s no longer a matter of his pride or himself, though. Hyunjin and Jeongin are also involved.

There’s rapid knocking on the door, and Felix gets it. The relationship between Seungmin and Felix is still frosted over, and the little extra brain space Seungmin has these days is spent wondering how he can potentially make it up without telling any secrets.

“Hello?” Felix says, confused. Hyunjin is standing at the doorstep. Seungmin gets up off the floor and waves. “Who are you?”

“I… can I speak to Seungmin outside?”

Felix turns around and _looks_ at him, and Seungmin swallows.

Like Seungmin doesn’t have enough to explain to Felix, now he needs to add Hyunjin, this ridiculously attractive guy who Felix has never seen in his life, to the mix. Seungmin’s mind automatically comes up with a plausible explanation to this, and he already hates it.

Seungmin is so tired. But he can’t drag Felix into this mess. If Seungmin says Hyunjin is his friend, there might be the chance that Felix will try to befriend him, too.

“So, uh, Felix, this is Hyunjin,” Seungmin says, and takes a deep breath to prepare himself for the idiocy that is about to leave his mouth. “My boyfriend.”

“Your boyfriend?!” Felix asks, disbelieving.

To Hyunjin’s eternal credit, his face only contorts for a split second before it smooths out. “Yeah, I’m Seungmin’s boyfriend, I met him while buying flowers,” Hyunjin says. “I’d like to steal him away for a second, if that’s okay with you?”

“It’s okay with him,” Seungmin says.

“Hold up for just a hot second,” Felix says, but Tree chooses this moment to jump into Felix’s arms, and the moment of distraction is enough for Seungmin to slip out the front door and drag Hyunjin by the elbow down the steps of the apartment.

When they’ve gotten out of the apartment to the abandoned, rusty park nearby, Seungmin takes a seat on the crumbling bench and puts his face in his hands. “For the record, I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.”

“No, I am. You’re officially on my adoptive brother’s hit list now,” Seungmin groans. “I just, there’s been a lot of crazy things happening, and I don’t want him to get involved in it, and that you’re my, uh, boyfriend, was the best explanation I could come up with. I doubt he’ll take the lie that easily, though. I don’t think he… trusts me anymore. I’ve been lying a lot.”

“It’s okay, I’ve always wanted to be somebody’s fake boyfriend,” Hyunjin says. “As long as you don’t get mixed up and think I’m your real one. It’s easy to mistake, you know.”

Seungmin can tell that Hyunjin is, in a rather bizarre fashion, trying to cheer him up. It kind of works. “No worries. The guy I’m actually into is _much_ cooler than you,” Seungmin says. “He can teleport.”

(Oh.)

“Teleportation? Damn,” Hyunjin says. Seungmin smiles, weak. “Actually, Jeongin is what I came here to talk to you about. I visited him a day ago.”

“How’s he doing?”

“I think he’s getting better, actually,” Hyunjin says. “His mom told me he slept all day, and like, that was good for him. That fancy academy you guys go to works you guys hard.”

“How do you know Jeongin, anyway?” Seungmin asks. “Since you don’t go to Sands?”

“We live really close together,” Hyunjin says. “I go over to his house all the time, but I haven’t lately… because I’ve been busy and so has he. I was really proud of him for getting a scholarship to Sands, though.”

Like Seungmin, Jeongin lives in the South Sector. If Hyunjin lives close, and refers to Sands as a fancy academy (which, well, it kind of is), he himself must not go to a good school. Seungmin folds his legs up on the rotten wooden bench, resting his cheek on his knee.

“I asked him about the energy,” Hyunjin says. “He refused to talk to me about it, but I felt like he wanted to tell me, and he just couldn’t. It was really unsettling. So I… well, I’ve been trying to do research on energy for the past two days—”

“So have I,” Seungmin says. “Nothing’s coming up.”

“Right, but I’ve been trying to use my technopathy to try and come up with the information,” Hyunjin says. “The internet’s a real mess, to say the least. I couldn’t find _anything_ at first. But then I kind of just randomly decided to try and search for energy _and_ Jeongin.”

“What?”

“I— just imagine like, a really aggressive version of Ctrl F. That’s what my mind did. It was really hard, because I don’t have a good grasp of my technopathy,” Hyunjin says. “But what I ended up finding was this file, which I don’t really get at all.”

He pulls a flash drive out of the pocket of his jeans and hands it to Seungmin. “I downloaded it onto here. There’s um, some really bad poetry and essays on it, too, ignore those. What you’re looking for will be a pdf. But this shit is… really scary. I think Jeongin was part of a testing program or something.”

“A testing program?” Seungmin asks. “Like, for energy?”

“Yes. Energy’s like a relatively new thing, right? At least, I only started delivering during the summer,” Hyunjin says, voice serious. “But the data on here starts way back in _March_. They have a whole page of Jeongin’s statistics, like his age and blood type and stuff, and then they have what I think might be data on his reactions to the supplements.”

“On one hand, that would explain why Jeongin has energy,” Seungmin says. “On the other hand, that is royally _fucked up_. I can’t believe that.”

“I can,” Hyunjin says. “I’m sure they would pay him a lot for this. Jeongin’s mom… lost her job a year back. He needed the money.”

“Okay,” Seungmin says, reeling. “Okay. Jesus.”

“The thing is, now I’m not sure if Jeongin’s sickness is connected to energy at all or if it’s just a sickness in general, and we were freaking out over nothing because the guy just insisted on not taking a break,” Hyunjin says. “Nothing else I’ve found says that energy has any negative effects.”

“A testing program,” Seungmin says. He rolls Hyunjin’s flash drive between his thumb and forefinger. “Alright, I’ll look at this. But Hyunjin, listen. Jeongin’s sickness looks like power exhaustion to me. That’s just my opinion on it.”

Hyunjin stands up. “I share that opinion,” he says. “In my experience, people don’t tend to pay you money unless they want you to do something they wouldn’t want to do themselves. I doubt Jeongin walked away from the testing program completely okay.”

\---

When Seungmin gets home, Felix just _looks_ at him.

Neither of them are telepaths, but he gets the message loud and clear. _Tell me what’s going on._

Seungmin looks down. Felix has always been his person. To keep secrets is killing him. But what’s happening right now— Seungmin knows it’s dangerous, and he can’t jeopardize Felix by involving him.

He stays silent, and Felix shakes his head and walks away. A chasm splinters between them, and Seungmin feels knots tie in his stomach, ropes wrap around his limbs. He feels like he just lost his best friend, and he supposes he did— he hopes that after this, things will return to normal.

Seungmin takes out his school-issued laptop, plugging the drive in and trying to distract himself. He’ll take a look at this file first.

Hyunjin wasn’t kidding about the bad poetry and essays— Seungmin has to scroll through a bunch of word documents before he finds the pdf, which is titled, _look at this_. His hand hovers over the keyboard, uncertain, before he clicks on it.

It takes a minute to load, and Seungmin looks at the first page while it does, which indeed is about Jeongin. It can’t be anybody else. He’s about to move the pointer to the scroll bar, but it won’t move.

The screen flashes. Goes black.

Seungmin doesn’t think too much of that until a white cursor appears onscreen. _Kim Seungmin_ , some invisible hand types, and Seungmin _barely_ restrains himself from screaming.

_Your concern for your friend is admirable. However, I assure you that his current illness and fatigue is in of no relation whatsoever to energy… he lives in a polluted area of the city without access to many over-the-counter medicines, and goes to a rigorous academy which he overworks himself at._

The cursor misspells _rigorous_. Backspaces. Re-spells it.

_I would also advise you not to do any further snooping. Looking through your files at Sands, I note that you are not there on scholarship, and are providing payment on a monthly basis. It would be rather awful, I suppose, if you were to lose your job, and could no longer attend the school, but that won’t happen as long as you stop trying to play pretend at detective._

_Once you pull out the flash drive, the laptop will continue to work as usual._

_Sincerely, XTech_

Seungmin’s heart hammers. He pulls out the flash drive, and as promised, the terrifying message disappears, replaced by Seungmin’s usual screensaver.

XTech?

Seungmin doesn’t put the flash drive back in; he puts it in his backpack and tries to forget about it. Whenever he remembers it, he feels like he’s carrying some kind of possessed object, which he supposes it is.

 _You won’t lose your job as long you stop trying to play pretend at detective_. Seungmin can barely sleep, wracked with fear. He wonders who XTech is, if they are being truthful on this. But work at For You seems normal for the next couple of days, and Seungmin grows his flowers, mind elsewhere.

“Excuse me,” Hyunjin says, walking up to the counter. He’s dressed sharply, as usual per his visits, but Seungmin knows it’s all a ruse. “If possible, can we speak in the back room again?”

The boyfriend lie is working pretty well— Seungmin told Soyeon it— although Seungmin cringes at the idea of actually _doing anything_ in the back room with Hyunjin. As soon as the two of them get there, Hyunjin pulls his arm and whispers, “Shit, I ran into trouble.”

“Me too,” Seungmin says. He pulls the flash drive out of his backpack, words tumbling out of his mouth. “I tried to plug this in but then a message appeared onscreen saying that I can’t snoop, or else I’ll lose my job.”

“Same, except mine threatened my life,” Hyunjin says. He pulls up his shirt, and there’s marker on his stomach. Seungmin tilts his head upside down so he can read it.

In harsh letters: _This time, it’s Sharpie. Next time, it might be a knife. XOXO, MindWarp._

“What— how—”

“I was coming home from school when I felt someone looking at me. I looked up, and they tossed me a marker. I caught it and then I wrote this on myself,” Hyunjin says. “Their name says it. They can control minds. They telepathically informed me I should also stop looking.”

“My message was from someone named XTech,” Seungmin says. He looks around the backroom. “Do you— do you think anyone is watching us right now?”

“XTech? Sounds like they have technopathy, like me,” Hyunjin says, looking deeply unsettled. “If that’s the case, their turf is only technology, so we should be fine. MindWarp, on the other hand… I’m not sure.”

“You said MindWarp was looking at you,” Seungmin points out. “They might have to be looking at you or at least be close to you to manipulate minds.”

“Hopefully,” Hyunjin sighs.

“XTech and Mindwarp are like, actual supervillain names,” Seungmin says. “We’re on the radar of supervillains?”

“Sounds like it. Should we just… stop? If Jeongin is getting better?” Hyunjin says, looking deeply unsettled. “I feel like our silence is being bought.”

“XTech wrote to me that energy has nothing to do with Jeongin’s sickness,” Seungmin says. “I’m not sure I trust that.”

He _should_ stop all of this. Not dig himself further into a hole that goes deeper than he ever imagined. Seungmin should just keep working at his job, paying off his tuition. That would be the easy route.

But their silence _is_ being bought, cheaply at that, with fear and threats. He bites his cheek, mulling his options over. He doesn’t want to place Hyunjin or himself in more danger.

“Would you mind if I went over this stuff with a person I know?” Seungmin asks, slow. “I think… he might have some answers.”

“Who’s this person?”

“Would you happen to know who J.One is?”

It’s almost funny, the way Hyunjin’s face lights up, the way one’s face lights up when they hear the name of their idol. “Oh my god, you’re friends with 3racha?” Hyunjin says, barely able to contain his excitement, which is _ridiculous_ , considering the situation.

“Not— 3racha. One third of 3racha.” And they aren’t even friends. Seungmin rubs his temples.

“I mean, if we’re dealing with supervillains here, then we should probably give the case to some superheroes, yeah. I can’t believe you know 3racha,” Hyunjin says. Then, his face creases. “At least, I think, that’s the right thing to do. Seungmin, I’m really…”  

“Scared?” Seungmin supplies. Hyunjin nods. “You and me both.”

“Are you sure 3racha will be on our side?” Hyunjin asks. “Or, well, mine, at least… I’m still delivering energy. Which is illegal.”

Seungmin wants to promise that he knows J.One well enough that Hyunjin will be protected, but in truth, he doesn’t know. “And I’m selling energy,” he says. “I’ll keep your name out of it until I’m sure he won’t report you, though.”

It’s a good solution, he tells himself. He isn’t staying silent, but he’s palming the situation off to somebody who will be better at handling it. 3racha are the protectors of the city.

The two of them stare at each other, the gravity of the situation weighing them down. Then, Seungmin hands over Hyunjin’s package, now aware of the contents, and then Seungmin goes back up front and tries not to let the fear swallow him whole.

\---

Seungmin catches sight of Jisung in the flood to enter the cafeteria, and falls into step beside him. “Can we talk?

Jisung turns to him in surprise before looking away. “Alright,” he says, not quite looking him in the eye. “Any particular reason?”

“Just to talk to you,” Seungmin says. His legs feel like jelly. He wonders how much Jisung knows about For You. He wonders if Jisung thinks Seungmin’s selling the stuff on purpose. The two of them turn around to walk against the flood and outside of school, before Jisung teleports to them to the empty park again.

“What do you want to talk to me about?” Jisung says.

Seungmin takes a deep breath. _Don’t incriminate Hyunjin._ “I think I know why you guys were searching For You that night,” he says.

Jisung has always been a terrible liar, even when he isn’t telling lies. “Okay.”

“What are you guys going to do about it?”

“Of course you looked into it,” Jisung mutters, tone exasperated. “And if you’re right, well, forget about it. We’re going to do _nothing_ about it. It would be pointless, anyway. For You’s just a warehouse. What do you think we would do? Blow it up?”

Seungmin crosses his arms. “ _Something_ like that.”

“That’d be like… cutting off a flower head and expecting the root of the plant just to go away. We were just searching. We’re interested in the energy industry.”

“The industry that’s… illegal,” Seungmin says, trying to see how far he can push.

“Energy’s only illegal because it falls under the category of a supplement, and those are generally illegal,” Jisung says. “But we haven’t seen any negative effects of energy yet, though, except for like, more superpowered crimes and idiot kids getting injured after flying into walls and shit.”

“But you’re still interested in it. Why don’t _you_ forget about it, like you’re telling me to forget about it?”

Jisung sighs. “Because CB97… he used to friends with this guy who’s now an official superhero at District 7. You know. BamBam of Got7?” Seungmin nods— he’s vaguely heard of him. “The two of them are still in touch, and BamBam’s cardinal rule is that you don’t get your superpower for free. I don’t trust energy. I think it’s too good to be true.”

It probably is. “But you’re not going to arrest people who are distributing it or anything.”

“The nice thing about not being under an official company is that you can operate under your own morals,” Jisung says. “From data we’re getting, most people who are selling are under the poverty line. We’re not gonna just… take away their jobs. The police don’t care if we did report, anyway. They’ve been turning a blind eye to all this.”

“Okay. Then what would you say if energy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Seungmin says. “My friend is sick in a way that looks like extreme power exhaustion. Another friend and I looked into it, and it’s possible that the sick friend is sick due to energy. We aren’t sure, though.”

“You’re being very vague,” Jisung says. “You’re going to have to tell me more if you want me to do anything about it.”

“What makes you think I want you to do anything about it?” Seungmin retorts.

Jisung rolls his eyes. “Why else would you want to talk to me?” he says, voice bitter. “I’m J.One, at your service.”

Seungmin narrows his eyes. “I’m not sure I want to talk to you anymore.” But then he remembers Hyunjin, and Jeongin, and also the situation he’s in, and forces himself to fight sheer pettiness and push on. “I’m… sorry. Ignore that.”

Jisung looks down, chastised, and Seungmin remembers that although Jisung might be good at being a superhero, behind the mask, he’s just a high schooler, too. “I’m sorry, too. Just, continue on.”

“I don’t know if you can do anything about it because I might already be in too deep,” Jisung says. “My friend— the one who isn’t sick—” damn, secrecy is confusing “— is a technopath, and he found these files online that suggest the sick friend was part of a testing program for energy. He put the files on a flash drive and gave them to me.”

Seungmin feels sick as he continues on. The worst part about this is that he isn’t sure if 3racha is equipped to handle this. They’re amateur superheroes.

“I put the flash drive into the computer and I got a message from someone called XTech, saying that I shouldn’t look into this any further, or else I’d lose my job.”

“Shit,” Jisung says, astounded, but also afraid.

“I— yeah,” Seungmin says. “And my friend, the technopath, got a message from someone who calls themselves MindWarp. They made my friend write on their stomach, _this time, it’s Sharpie, but next time, it’ll be a knife_. Mind control. My friend… he’s really scared.”

“Are _you_ scared?”

“Of course not,” Seungmin says, but that’s complete and utter bullshit. Jisung looks like he wants to give Seungmin a hug and is holding himself back, for good reason. Seungmin rubs his temples. “That’s basically all, I guess. Do what you want with that information.”

“Thanks for telling me,” Jisung says, face pale. He looks around the park, like he’s paranoid someone might have heard them. “But I’m not sure what I _can_ do. Man, I don’t want you to lose your job. But if XTech and MindWarp are so desperate for you guys to stop looking into it, then I feel like it’s something worth looking into. How sick is your friend?”

“I think he’ll be okay. He’s just most scared he’ll lose his scholarship. You only get a certain number of days of absence at Sands.”

“Okay. I’ll do what I can,” Jisung says. “Can I tell the information to the rest of 3racha? I’m just the guy who teleports here.”

Seungmin weighs this in his mind. “Yeah. Sure.” With one caveat. “As long as you promise that my technopath friend won’t get in trouble.”

“Trust me, we’ll protect him best as we can.” Jisung says. “In the meantime, hang out with me more, alright? In case I can… I don’t know, do anything for you. Or like, help you in any way.”

Seungmin coughs. “Lame.”

“No one said superheroes were cool.”

“I think _everybody_ says superheroes are cool,” Seungmin says, but he’s dodging the question of whether he’ll hang out with Jisung more or not, before deciding that this is more important than whatever history or high school tension they have going on.

There’s a stretch of silence. “You still volunteering at the forest preserve?” Seungmin asks, a blatant attempt at small talk.

“Yeah. It isn’t as fun as it is with you, though,” Jisung says, and Seungmin experiences the strangest sensation of having his stomach unknot itself while simultaneously flipping itself upside down.

\---

In math class, Jisung passes a note to Seungmin. _Can we talk to your technopath friend_?

“Verdict: 3racha wants to meet you,” Seungmin says to Hyunjin the next time Hyunjin comes to For You for a delivery. “On Saturday, J.One can teleport you to our meeting location. Just, um, he needs your address.”

Hyunjin narrows his eyes. “That sounds a lot like J.One wanting my address so he can arrest me.”

“It isn’t like that, I swear. J.One knows that I’m selling energy and is totally chill with it,” Seungmin says, the phrasing ridiculous enough for Hyunjin to snort. “No, but J.One is actually very concerned about me losing my job. Because, you know. Sands tuition.”

“I’m trusting you.” Hyunjin reluctantly gives his address, then adds, “Speaking of Sands, Jeongin will come back next Monday.”

“Oh thank god,” Seungmin sighs. “How is Jeongin?”

“Skittish. Both of us are very, fucking, skittish,” Hyunjin says. He tucks the package under his arm. “Health wise, he isn’t doing too well, but he’s alive. He better not push himself when he goes back to school.”

On Saturday, Seungmin goes to the forest preserve, the place familiar yet foreign after not having come for so long. He’s terrified out of his mind, but the sunlight relaxes him, almost against his will.

Seokwoo is still the steward, and he expresses delight at having so many volunteers that day. Jisung is there, obviously, along with Changbin. There’s also this guy that Seungmin thinks might be named Chan but isn’t sure, and _Woojin_ , of all people.

Who is CB97? Chan or Woojin?

They’re collecting seeds from a woodland ecosystem, and once they’re all deep enough inside, Jisung disappears and appears five minutes later with Hyunjin.

“Hey, Hyunjin,” Seungmin says.

“Hi,” Hyunjin says, looking like he would rather be anywhere _but_ here. “I’m, um, Hyunjin,” he says. “Seungmin’s boyfriend.”

Jisung, who had been holding onto Hyunjin’s hand for teleportation’s sake, drops it like he’s been burned. “You what.”

Seungmin wants to die. “We’re not using that cover story here.”

“Oh, okay, then I’m Seungmin’s friend,” Hyunjin says, looking _even more_ terrified now that Jisung is glaring at him. Chan eyes them with something that might be _amusement_. “You guys are…?”

“I’m Changbin, or SpearB,” Changbin says. “That’s Chan, or CB97. I’m assuming you won’t go around telling everybody who we are. And that’s Woojin. The public doesn’t know about him, but he does all the behind-the-scenes work. Collects data and such.”

“We’d be useless without him, he’s the only one with a brain here,” Chan adds. “Anyway, Jisung, or J.One here, told us what’s happening. You’re Hyunjin? The technopath?”

Hyunjin looks a little starry-eyed. “Yeah.”

“Okay, then, since we’re all here, I’ll get started,” Woojin says, running his fingers up a stem of dropseed and putting the seeds into a Ziploc bag. “I’m fairly certain the messages from XTech and MindWarp were scare tactics, without _too_ much weight behind them.”

“How much weight is too much weight,” Seungmin says.

“If XTech is a technopath like Hyunjin, then their turf is only technology,” Woojin says. “As long as we’re communicating in person, they can’t do anything. And MindWarp seems to be do mind control, which only works if they’re looking at the person they’re controlling.”

Seungmin can’t help it— he looks around. He’s pleased he was right about MindWarp’s range of power usage, though. “Okay?”

“So they’re trying to make you paranoid, but the two of them aren’t all-seeing,” Woojin says. “I think when Hyunjin downloaded the files, it left a traceable mark to his computer, which is how MindWarp managed to find him. And when you opened the files, XTech could see that.”

“Basically what he’s saying is— neither of you are in trouble just relaying the info to us,” Changbin says.

Woojin’s a very reassuring person. With just a couple of words, Seungmin feels his anxiety subsiding. “Alright.”

“What _might_ be trouble is if energy actually caused your friend’s illness,” Woojin says. “There hasn’t been any reports of any negative effects yet, but—”

“The file said the testing program started in March,” Hyunjin says. “Jeongin—”

Hyunjin’s eyes widen, realizing he just said the name of his friend. “It’s okay,” Woojin says. “We’re not going to tell anybody.”

“Jeongin only got sick in September,” Hyunjin says. “There’s a big time gap.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, it might have a delayed effect,” Changbin says. “The thing is, _no scientists_ have said anything like that, which I’m curious about. Their analyses all say that the supplements supply the energy that you deplete using your superpower.”

“Although, it doesn’t help you master your superpower automatically,” Chan says, wry.

“Where have you been getting these reports from?” Hyunjin asks. “I’m curious.”

“Oh, Woojin isn’t a technopath, but he’s really good with searching the internet,” Chan says.

Something clicks into place. “Is the internet part of a technopath’s turf?” Seungmin asks.

Realization dawns on Woojin’s face as well. “Yes,” he says. “Technopaths can reroute internet activity or block certain sites… oh.”

“Doesn’t seem beneath XTech to mess with other people’s computers,” Jisung says, eyes flashing. “Maybe he’s blocked people saying anything different. But then how are we supposed to find the information?”

“I’m a technopath,” Hyunjin says quietly. “I could try. I’m not a very good one, though.”

Hyunjin looks so small standing there, shin deep in grasses and wildflowers, and Seungmin looks at him in disbelief. _Are you serious_?

“Don’t try,” Woojin says, saying what Seungmin is thinking. “We’ll come up with some other solution. Don’t get yourself involved.”

“Come on, I’ll show you what kind of seeds we’re supposed to be collecting,” Seungmin says to Hyunjin, and yanks him deeper into the woods. “Are you crazy? Did you seriously just suggest you might get on MindWarp’s bad side, _again_?”

Hyunjin shrugs, smile grim. “It was pretty fun finding those files.”

Seungmin thinks of MindWarp’s threat, wonders how Hyunjin could be so willing to help like he is right now, then wonders if Hyunjin could stand a chance against a monster like XTech. This guy has _no_ sense of self-preservation. “You—”

“As a technopath, I can tell you that I leave kind of a superpowered signature on anything I tamper with, so do all technopaths,” Hyunjin says. “If you give me your laptop, I might be able to see where XTech messed with it. I’ll make sure not to tamper with it, though, so nothing can be traced back to you.”

“Still, isn’t it dangerous for _you_?” Seungmin asks. He wants to be as uninvolved as possible after this.

“I realize I’m totally insane to offer this kind of thing to 3racha, and I kind of regret it, but I’m just saying. It’s possible.”

“Have you practiced doing this kind of thing before?”

“No. That’s why I said I’d try.”

Seungmin reaches out and squeezes Hyunjin’s arm. “Why are you doing this?”

“Haven’t you ever wanted to be a superhero before, too?” Hyunjin says, and Seungmin wonders if he’s the only kid who never had such idealistic dreams. “I’m not sure why I’m doing this. Maybe because I care about Jeongin so much, I guess.”

“I see.”

“Anyway, not the time and place for this, but I don’t want to talk about this thing anymore,” Hyunjin says. Seungmin plucks fluffy seed heads off some white snakeroot. “You like J.One? He _is_ cooler than me.”

Seungmin drops the seed heads. “What the hell?” he says.

“Um, MindWarp’s scary, but I really thought J.One was going to kill me when I said I was your boyfriend,” Hyunjin says, and laughs. “You could look into that. Just saying.”

Hyunjin is right— _not_ the time and place for this, but it does a good job of alleviating Seungmin’s fear just for a second. “Okay, first of all, shut up,” Seungmin says. “Second of all, I’ve got my job tomorrow, but afterwards, I could come over to your place and give you my laptop for you to check.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“But like, are you sure you even want to?” Seungmin says. He won’t blame Hyunjin if he wants out. If MindWarp found out… Seungmin doesn’t think the words on Hyunjin’s stomach were an empty threat.

Hyunjin stares off into the distance, into the trees, then breaks a stem off a nearby goldenrod. “These flowers are so pretty,” Hyunjin says, and Seungmin supposes that means Hyunjin doesn’t want to talk about this anymore.

\---

After Seungmin’s shift at For You, he takes the train to Hyunjin’s address, laptop next to him. He imagines XTech’s fingers all over the keys, and shudders.

The train doesn’t have too many stops in the South Sector of District 9, so Seungmin has to do some walking. Hyunjin’s neighborhood looks like a mirror of Seungmin’s, crumbling and rusted. There are a couple of kids playing on the sidewalk, chalk mixing with graffiti.

After half an hour, Seungmin reaches Hyunjin’s complex, then goes up to his room and knocks, since the doorbell is broken. Hyunjin opens it. “Alright,” Hyunjin says. “Let’s do this.”

The two of them sit cross-legged on the ground, and Seungmin powers up the computer and keys in his password. “Just a warning that I play 2048 sometimes during class,” Seungmin says, trying to pretend this isn’t too serious.

“Um, understandable, on this fancy laptop,” Hyunjin says, then rests his fingers on the keys, closing his eyes. He snaps them open a while later. “I have… no idea what I’m supposed to be looking for. It might take a long time, so you could leave…”

“Unfortunately, I need this fancy laptop for schoolwork,” Seungmin says drily. “Also, I’m in no rush to go back home. Both my mom and my brother are really busy, and I don’t think either of them… really trust me anymore.”

“I’m sorry,” Hyunjin says.

“It’s okay.” Seungmin rests his weight on his palms, stretching his legs out. His chest feels too tight. He’s tired, physically and mentally. “Mind if I take a nap?”

“The floor’s disgusting, but sure,” Hyunjin says. “I’ll be at this for some time.”

Seungmin closes his eyes and falls into a fitful sleep. His dreams are weird, but uncorrelated to real life— there’s some fruit involved, and a pair of sneakers. When he wakes up, it’s to Hyunjin shaking his shoulder.

“I got it,” Hyunjin says, sounding completely exhausted.

“You wh…” Seungmin slurs, cracking his eyes open. Shit, somehow, sleeping made him even _more_ tired, and his body is sore from lying on the ground. “Oh! You got it! Wait— what does that mean?”

“I think I found XTech’s power trace,” Hyunjin says, then shudders. “It feels— slimy.”

Seungmin shudders as well. “Ew.”

“Slimy, but really powerful,” Hyunjin says, and his shoulders slump. He rubs his eyes. “That was… really tiring. I think I’m gonna search the internet next, try and compare the power trace… but I don’t want to do that on your laptop, and I’m really tired…”

“Take a break.”

Hyunjin sets the laptop aside, and both of them subconsciously scoot away from it for good measure. Seungmin is grateful that Hyunjin is here; the two of them understand each other, although in the most unfortunate way possible. “Sands must be really shiny,” Hyunjin mumbles. “They give a laptop like that to everybody?”

“Yeah.”

“I wish our school did that.” Hyunjin closes his eyes. “I’m a natural at technopathy, but I haven’t gotten much practice. One time, in elementary school, I got to build a website for a friend— that was one of the best moments of my life.”

“Don’t say shit like that or I might do something like steal a computer for you.”

“Thanks for the offer.”  

Seungmin imagines Hyunjin coming to their school. Imagines Hyunjin sitting at a table with Jeongin and Minho, all stressed-out scholarship kids, all laughing about 2basco, too broke to get any energy to try it out for themselves.

He stops imagining because it makes him too sad. “So,” Seungmin says. “XTech doesn’t know that you did this, right? Like, found his power trace or whatever?”

“No. I was just looking, not touching,” Hyunjin says, certain. “Here, I’m looking up the location of the nearest internet cafe. I’ll skive school tomorrow and go to it. Thanks for giving me your laptop.”

“Skive—”

Hyunjin looks amused. “I don’t go to Sands, you know. Our high school doesn’t care.”

\---

Seungmin almost wants to skive himself on Monday with how tired he is, but he gets up once he remembers— Jeongin is going to come back today. Unbidden, warmth unfurls in Seungmin’s chest.

Impatient, he looks forward to lunch, and then he sees him— Jeongin’s mop of curly black hair. He still doesn’t look completely well, but he looks significantly better than when Seungmin last saw him. Seungmin runs over and pulls Jeongin into a headlock.

“ _What_ ,” Jeongin shrieks, and then he sees that it’s Seungmin. “Oh, um…”

Jeongin’s expression is all wrong. He looks terrified. Of Seungmin. “Hi,” Seungmin says, and un-headlocks him.

Of course this isn’t going to go smoothly. Seungmin curses himself out. Both of them are carrying secrets that draw invisible lines between them. “I’ve got to go to the library,” Jeongin says. “To print a paper.”

And then he vanishes. Not as in going invisible. As in he hightails it out of there. Seungmin’s mouth twists. There isn’t a worse time to lose another friend.

“Jeongin still not back?” Minho asks, at lunch. “I’ve been counting the days. He might lose his scholarship—”

“No, he’s back,” Seungmin sighs. “He said he needed to print a paper at the library.”

“Oh. That’s weird.”

“Yeah, isn’t it.”

“Not that you’ve got room to talk. You’ve been missing lunch a lot, too,” Minho says sharply. Seungmin has nothing to say to that. Minho takes a book out for English class and starts reading, and Seungmin has the sinking feeling that Minho is really mad, if he’s doing homework in the cafeteria.

Seungmin looks across the cafeteria and sees Felix. Felix. Seungmin desperately wishes he could just tell Felix everything, so Felix could understand why Seungmin has been so tired and MIA and weird.

 _How did I get here_ , Seungmin wonders.

Jisung isn’t at math that day, and Seungmin doesn’t think much of it, until Seungmin is about to slog his way to work after school and gets accosted by a blur. Seungmin blinks, and it materializes into Jisung and— Hyunjin?

“What—” Seungmin says, but doesn’t get to finish, as Jisung yanks him in by the wrist and teleports the three of them to Jisung’s house.

They’ve barely landed before Seungmin explodes. “ _Explain_?”

They’re in Jisung’s room, which looks exactly as it does last year, messy, but in a nice way. Seungmin blinks, remembers being fifteen, remembers thinking about an almost-kiss, before he notices that Hyunjin seems to be having trouble breathing.

“Shit,” Seungmin says, annoyance replaced by worry. “What happened?”

He looks at Jisung, who shrugs, eyes panicked. “I don’t know? Hyunjin just came to Sands looking like he ran a marathon.”

Seungmin is awful at comforting people, but he awkwardly wraps his arms around Hyunjin, who shivers under his embrace. “Hey. Breathe. It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not, I messed up,” Hyunjin says, words tripping one over the other. “I was at the internet cafe, searching the internet for XTech’s power trace, and I found a couple of websites that I can tell they’ve been diverting attention from. I got too excited, and careless. And I felt XTech’s power just— touch mine.”

“What,” Seungmin says.

“I can’t explain it, but long story short, XTech knows that I was looking into stuff again,” Hyunjin says. “I basically ran out of the cafe. But I can’t go back home now because… you know… I might get killed or something. So I came here. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Seungmin opens his mouth, but no words come out. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” Hyunjin wrests himself from Seungmin’s embrace, head down. “I’m screwed.”

“I thought we agreed you weren’t going to look into this?” Jisung sighs, head in his hands. “Shit, Hyunjin.”

He isn’t wearing a mask, but at that moment, Seungmin almost sees the lines between Jisung and his alter-ego blur. Superhero vs. high school student.

“I _know_ , I fucked up,” Hyunjin says. “But on the bright side, I managed to find the links to the websites that XTech’s been messing with.”

Jisung looks astounded that Hyunjin can sound off a _bright side_. He doesn’t know what Seungmin is unfortunately all too aware of— both Hyunjin and Seungmin don’t place too much value in themselves.

“Okay, I’ve got a short-term solution for this, I think,” Jisung says, after a minute. “Changbin’s parents know he’s SpearB. You could stay over at his place for the time being. But…”

Hyunjin’s eyes rounden. “Wait, really?”

“His house is huge, you could fit a small village in there,” Jisung says. “But my question is if your parents are going to call the police or anything.”

“My mom died when I was younger, and my dad’s never around,” Hyunjin says, blunt. “You’re good on that issue. But like, are you sure I can just _stay over_ at SpearB’s?”

Jisung crosses his arms. “We have to make sure you’re safe.”

There’s a note of finality to his voice, along with a devastation to his eyes.

“Okay, is that the plan, then?” Seungmin says, just to _say_ something. “Hyunjin will stay over at Changbin’s until we can get XTech and MindWarp off his back?”

“Yeah,” Jisung says, sighing. “We’ll figure out the details later. Seungmin, you got work right now, yeah? I can teleport you over to For You. Hyunjin, stay here, I’ll be back in just a second.”

“Wait, just a second,” Hyunjin says, and Jisung pauses. “Seungmin, can you let Jeongin know I’m okay, if you can? He’ll be— worried.”

“Don’t ask Seungmin to do that just yet, we can’t involve him further,” Jisung says. He takes Seungmin’s hand, and Seungmin experiences that brief feeling of vertigo before he’s standing at the shopfront.

“You know I’m already involved,” Seungmin says.

He was tied to this story from the start, as soon as he woke up in For You to 3racha prowling around the shelves. He may have tried to hand it off, but he’s still stuck to this situation by some invisible glue. Seungmin resigns himself to that.

Seungmin knows that Jisung knows this, too. “I just don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Thanks for the concern,” Seungmin says, about to walk in. “Keep me posted.”

He’s suddenly overcome by a wave of sickness. It was strange, but Seungmin had thought Hyunjin invincible, naturally gifted at his power and willing to use it, but Hyunjin shook like someone who had played with fire and been badly burned.

Jisung holds the door open for him, the gesture strangely comforting. “I will,” he says, surprising the both of them, before he disappears.

\---

J.One is a superhero of his word.

“So here’s the deal,” Jisung explains to him a few days later, during lunch. Seungmin picks at a thread on his jeans, feverish from exhaustion. There had been a giant order of flowers, and then on top of that, he hasn’t been sleeping well. “Hyunjin’s staying over at Changbin’s. That’s settled.”

Seungmin stares off into the distance, gaze unseeing. “Okay, that’s good.”

“Also, Hyunjin’s information was useful, at least,” Jisung says. “Woojin contacted the people who created the websites Hyunjin found, that XTech has been hiding. I’m not the best person to explain this to you, because it’s a lot of science, and I’m kind of failing physics right now—”

“Oh yeah, me too,” Seungmin says. “Gravity. What’s that?”

“Right?” Jisung says. “But basically, if Hyunjin’s right, XTech has been maneuvering attention away from these scientific publications that say that energy doesn’t actually give you energy. The pills are actually just… placebos? That’s the word?”

“I’m sorry,” Seungmin says, “I must be really tired. I thought you just said that energy doesn’t actually give you energy?”

“That _is_ actually what I said,” Jisung says. “What the people Woojin talked to think is that the pills give you the illusion that you aren’t losing energy, but you actually are. You’re losing a lot of energy. And after awhile, the illusion gives, and you crash.”

“Whoa, how does that work?”

“And that’s the science part that I don’t know how to explain.”

“It would make sense,” Seungmin says slowly, thinking of how Jeongin had partaken in a testing program that started in March, but only got sick in September. A delayed effect. He shakes his head. “So what are we doing with that information?”

“I…” Jisung puts his head in his hands. “We’re working on that. But I just know that we have to do something. It’s a hazardous product being distributed to the public without the hazards even being told about.”

Jisung looks disappointed, but not surprised. Seungmin isn’t surprised, either. 3racha breaks up money-making schemes a lot; the world’s a greedy place. Seungmin looks at Jisung’s nails, bitten down to the quick. There are dark circles under his eyes, and Seungmin remembers that Jisung’s been using his power a lot, too.

“I talked to Changbin and Chan about all this,” Jisung admits, voice defeated. “We all agreed that after this, we’re going to stop playing at being superheroes.”

 _That_ surprises Seungmin. “You guys _are_ superheroes, though.”

“No, we’re just high schoolers.” Jisung shakes his head. “We started off— we wanted to help people. But now Hyunjin doesn’t have a home, and you might not be able to go to Sands anymore, and—”

“The part about me going to Sands doesn’t matter,” Seungmin says.

“No, it really does.”

Seungmin chews his lip. “I guess you can’t help everyone.”

“Yeah, I can’t, and it’s killing me,” Jisung says. “But 3racha agreed that we can’t back out of the whole energy debacle now, because if the scientists saying that energy is an illusion are right, we have to, like, do something. I don’t even know. We’re just too deep into this, you know?”

Seungmin folds his legs up to his chest. “For what it’s worth, you guys seem to be pretty good superheroes to me.”

“Thanks.” It’s genuine, if weak. “I just— I’m sorry to you and Hyunjin. Call me selfish, but you two are the ones I want to help the most.”

Both of them are silent for a moment, Jisung’s words hanging between them. Seungmin thinks, that isn’t selfish. That’s human. But superheroes are supposed to be inhuman. “I think— you shouldn’t underestimate the strength of the people you’re trying to help, then,” Seungmin says. “I don’t know about me, but Hyunjin’s gotten through a lot.”

Jisung inhales, exhales. “Right now, I just wish all of us were regular juniors,” he says. “Freaking out over standardized testing and prom.”

3racha disbanding. What about that. Seungmin will support that, not because he thinks that they’re bad superheroes, but because he thinks that maybe no one should be expected to save the day, all the time.

“How is Hyunjin, anyway?” Seungmin asks.

“He’s safe for the time being, at least. He’s really worried about his friend, Jeongin.” Jisung sighs. “I don’t know. Seungmin, I don’t know.”

Seungmin knows, at least on this aspect. Jeongin is to Hyunjin as Felix is to Seungmin. He thinks of what Hyunjin asked— _tell Jeongin I’m okay_ , and figures he can carry out that one favor.

\---

Seungmin sets the alarm so he’ll get up before the sun even rises. Next to him, Felix sleeps fitfully, and Seungmin adjusts the clock to ring at the time Felix is supposed to wake.

Their relationship is icy and cold. Seungmin rubs his temples, boarding the train alone, eyes rolling with the effort of keeping them from fluttering shut. He almost stumbles walking off the train onto the platform, backpack an iron weight on his shoulders.

Something in the back of his mind says, _I can’t do this for much longer_.

Today, he needs to catch Jeongin. Seungmin stifles a yawn with the back of his hand, heading over to school grounds. The sun peeks up over the edges of the horizon.

He sets his stuff down on a school bench, and he doesn’t mean to doze off until he feels a hand shaking him awake. “Seungmin, wake up.” Seungmin blinks, wide, owlish.

Jeongin. A kind coincidence.

“What are you doing here so early?” Jeongin asks, then shakes his head. “— Nevermind. I—”

Seungmin reaches out and grabs onto Jeongin’s arm. “Stop,” he says. “Do you really have anywhere you need to be?”

Jeongin hesitates.

“We’ve both been avoiding each other.” Seungmin rubs his eyes, takes a deep breath. “Listen, when you gave me your bag the other day, I found what was in it. I know you’ve been—”

Jeongin attempts to jerk out of his grasp, and Seungmin barely keeps his hold. “I can’t talk about that. I’m sorry. I have to go study for a math test I have today.”

“Shut up, you’ll do fine on your imaginary math test.” Jeongin has never been particularly good at lying— Seungmin supposes that’s a trait most of the people he knows share. Seungmin sighs. “I… I’m not going to judge you, if that’s what you’re scared of. I just…”

Seungmin should have planned this out more beforehand— it’s impossible for him to keep track of every thread in the web he’s somehow found himself in. “I just want to tell you that Hyunjin is okay.”

“You know Hyunjin? How—” Jeongin’s eyes widen. “Where is he?”

Seungmin bites down on his lip. “He just told me to tell you he’s okay,” he says. “Nothing else. He doesn’t want you to get involved.”

“No, if Hyunjin is involved, then I’m involved, too. We’re family.” Jeongin glares at him, defiant, and Seungmin would almost admire the sharp brilliance of his stare if it were under different circumstances. “So tell me. Where is he?”

“I’m not telling you where he is when you didn’t tell him you were taking energy,” Seungmin says.

“That was for his own good.”

A wry smile touches Seungmin’s lips. “I think Hyunjin would say that exact same thing about why you can’t know where he is.”

“Then why do _you_ know?” Jeongin asks, and Seungmin thinks, he wishes he didn’t. Seungmin’s mouth twists, and Jeongin seems to sense that Seungmin is unwilling to divulge the information no matter what he says. “You just— can you promise me he’s safe?”

It isn’t a lie if it’s the truth for the time being. “Yes.” And then, because that word doesn’t sit well with him, “I’ll tell you if that changes.”

“It isn’t just me, you know,” Jeongin says voice rushed. “I couldn’t tell Hyunjin in part because of the mind control—”   

Jeongin recoils like he’s taken the step off a precipice. Seungmin blinks. “Mind control?”

“I can’t talk about it,” Jeongin pleads. “I can’t—” And then he breaks out of Seungmin’s grip and runs.

Mind control. MindWarp must have somehow influenced Jeongin, too. _I can’t talk about it_ . He _literally_ can’t talk about it. Jeongin’s nowhere to be found, now, but Seungmin thinks it’s funny how even operating alone, Jeongin and Hyunjin are both running from the same villain.

Seungmin sighs, picks up his backpack. He _actually_ has a math test today. Might as well study.

In history class, his teacher calls him up to the desk as the bell is about to ring. “I just want to inform you that you currently have an F in this class.”

Seungmin halfheartedly prepares himself for a speech about applying himself and taking more responsibility. He doesn’t expect the teacher to say, “Is there any way I can help you? You’re a bright kid.” Concern, kindness— that’s what he’s afraid of. “And are you taking care of yourself? You’re always so tired when you come in.”

Seungmin isn’t experiencing any delayed effects due to an illegal supplement, but he’s been giving more than he’s intended to give. He can feel it in his exhaustion, a bone-deep sort that can’t be fixed with the little sleep he’s getting.

“I’ll study more,” he says, an empty promise, and heads off.

He thinks, _why am I here_? His mind, clouded with tiredness, can’t give him an answer. Baseball was all he had, and now… he’s attending Sands because of Felix. Because he wants to go to the same school as him. But now, the two of them aren’t talking even anymore.

Seungmin doesn’t belong here on his own. He thinks of Jisung, so concerned that he keep his spot. He thinks of how he grows plants at For You for a pay that probably isn’t worth it. He thinks of how he isn’t even learning anything at this point.

\---

He quits his job at For You that afternoon, stealing a handful of seeds on the way out.

\---

It doesn’t occur to him until later what an enormous decision that was, although he made it without thinking over too many of the consequences. Without that source of income, he’ll have to switch over to his local school.

There’s only a week left of September. Seungmin puts his head in his hands. Shit. He doesn’t want to think about the explanation that will go with this.

Technically, he doesn’t have to do his homework anymore, but it’s precisely the thought that he doesn’t need to do his homework anymore that makes him so desperate to keep any semblance of normalcy. He reaches over for his laptop so he can write his history essay, thinking with some regret, _I’ll have to give this up in a week_.

The screen flashes. Turns black. Seungmin’s blood turns to ice.

 _I see you’ve quit your job at For You_ , the cursor types. Seungmin forgets how to breathe. _Have you been snooping, like Hyunjin?_ Two boxes pop up. _Yes. No._ Seungmin doesn’t tap on either of them— he can’t get his limbs to move.

_For your sake, I hope you haven’t. I’ll let you know that losing your scholarship isn’t the worst thing that could happen to you, not by a long shot. It isn’t the worst thing that could happen to Felix, either._

_Sincerely, XTech_

The screen goes back to normal.

 _Felix_.

The door swings open, and Seungmin jumps, expecting it to be— he doesn’t know. Whoever the monster behind the screen is. But it’s just Felix. Seungmin has to resist the urge to hug him, to make sure that Felix is real. He bites down hard on his cheek, enough to taste blood.

Felix seems surprised that Seungmin is home so early, as shifts at For You run long. _Ran_ long. Seungmin looks at his history essay, the blank document.

It’s okay if Seungmin is in danger. But Felix… How did Seungmin not realize that his scholarship was just the tip of the iceberg that XTech held over him? Or he did realize, and just never though too hard about it. Seungmin wants to know who the hell is behind the screen, wants to inflict pain. But he can’t do anything.

It’s the worst feeling in the world, this helplessness.

Hyunjin had played with fire and been burned. Now it’s Seungmin’s turn. Hyunjin had turned to 3racha for refuge, but Seungmin refuses to do the same. Refuses to be a burden. Tears spill out of his eyes, down his cheeks.

All of his worth was lost after his elbow gave out on him, anyway.

Seungmin doesn’t even trust his own mind anymore, the decisions it’s making under unbelievable amounts of pressure without sufficient sleep. But it’s the only mind he’s got. He searches it for _some_ solution, any solution.

\---

He plans during class, gets a request from Woojin to meet him after school in Room 419, halting his thoughts for the time being.

Room 419 is the same, at least. The hydroponic towers are still running, a different set of plants growing in them this semester. Seungmin didn’t take Environmental Science, although he wanted to. He supposes it was due to fear.

Seungmin put all his hopes in baseball, and they were shattered. He’s afraid the same thing will happen with Environmental Science: somehow, it will be taken away from him, or he won’t be good enough. He has never been particular good with science, anyway.

Woojin’s sitting on top of one of the desks, feet on the chair, the way people are absolutely not supposed to sit. “Hey,” he says, and gestures for Seungmin to come closer. “I won’t keep you for long.”

“I mean, I got time.”

It’s true. No job to get to.

“Did you take this class this year?” Woojin asks, waving a hand around the room.

“No.”

Woojin, fortunately, doesn’t push him on his reasons. “Listen, I’m going to be honest with you here. At the end of all this, you might lose your job at For You, and you might not be able to keep coming to Sands.”

“I already quit my job at For You. I’m not going to be here in October.”

Woojin’s expression shifts. “Wait, when’d that happen?”

“Yesterday. I know… I don’t really belong here. I’m just trying to come here because my brother Felix is.”

Felix. In his head, Seungmin apologizes to him, over and over. The two of them are supposed to tell each other everything, supposed to be each other’s ride-or-die. Now, they can’t even talk.

Seungmin feels like he’ll splinter under the weight of everything he isn’t saying.

“I only agree with you saying you don’t belong here if you mean you’re too good for this place,” Woojin says, startling a laugh out of him. “Listen. I just wanna say— after all this. If you need help on anything, ask me, okay? Not as a superhero.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that I want you to have faith and not underestimate yourself so much,” Woojin says. “I just, I see you don’t care very much about yourself, but you should. Like— after all this is over, I want you to be okay.”

Seungmin crosses his arms, looking away. He doesn’t see much of a future for himself— he’s never envisioned himself as a superhero. “How’s the energy situation?”

Woojin’s eyes narrow. “Right, that,” he says. “Jisung isn’t too happy with me telling you all this, but I figured you deserve to know. I’m under suspicion at this point, too. XTech’s caught on to my own detective work, I’m not subtle.”

“Jisung told me that 3racha’s not gonna be a thing after this.”

“Well, yeah. After all this, they’re not going to _technically_ be superheroes anymore,” Woojin says. “Chan’s worried crazy over me doing all of this, saying I’m _technically_ a civilian or some shit, but I trust he’s got my back.”

“What’s your superpower, anyway?”

“Don’t have one.”

Seungmin blinks, surprised. “Oh.”

“Anyway, I’ve managed to dig up a lot of information on energy, along with the address of its manufacturing plant, but getting it, XTech sent me a message.” Woojin grins. “But I’m very non-threatening since I’m powerless. They didn’t threaten me too much.”

“How are you so calm about this?”

“3racha hasn’t let me get hurt yet.” Woojin’s smile drops. “In truth, though. It was kinda scary, getting a message like that. I haven’t fully fleshed out the plan yet, but we— well, 3racha— will do something soon. And then we’re just going to focus on making sure all of us are okay.”

“How soon is soon?” Seungmin asks.

He hasn’t fully fleshed out _his_ plan yet, but it’s coming together. Woojin might trust 3racha with his life, but Seungmin doesn’t trust 3racha with Felix’s life. If something happened to Felix, like XTech had threatened, Seungmin wouldn’t be able to stand it.

And Felix is in danger because of Seungmin.

Seungmin’s thinking about running away. If Felix isn’t connected to him, then he’ll be safe.

“Soon is soon. Like, if it were finals we’d all be freaking out soon.” Woojin smiles, wry. “I’ll keep you posted, alright?”

“Hey, one thing,” Seungmin says. “Can you not tell Jisung that I quit my job and won’t be coming here anymore?”

Something in Seungmin knows that Jisung would freak out. Woojin’s smile is sad. “Alright, but I mean, he’ll find out eventually,” he says. “I guess you’re right, though. I don’t want him stressed out even more. The guy’s already stretched thin.”

\---

Soon _is_ soon.

“I personally don’t like this,” Jisung says the next day, before he grabs Seungmin’s hand and teleports them into someone’s house.

It isn’t Jisung’s. This house is spacious, almost like a mansion. “This is Changbin’s place,” Jisung says. “Pretty sweet, huh.” Seungmin doesn’t deign him an answer, too busy looking around.

Seungmin follows Jisung up a flight of stairs into a room where Hyunjin is sitting on a bed.

“Changbin, Chan, and Woojin will be here soon,” Jisung says. “They don’t teleport and have to take the bus.”

“Imagine,” Seungmin says drily.

A quarter of an hour later, Chan, Changbin, and Woojin come walking up the steps, Changbin holding a tray containing a bowl of chips and some salsa. He must sense the look Seungmin shoots him, because he says, “Sorry. Force of habit.”

“I mean, I don’t mind,” Seungmin says, taking a chip and digging it into the salsa.

This is the last time he’ll get to eat chips and salsa in a room in a long while. Maybe the last time, period.

“Alright, so I’ve come up with the plan,” Woojin says, producing a notebook and a pencil out of seemingly nowhere. “It’s flashy, has three stages, and I really, _really_ hope it works.”

“It’ll be better than anything I could’ve come up with,” Chan says. “Hit us with it.”

“I mean, you’re not gonna like it,” Woojin says. “For one, it involves Hyunjin.”

Hyunjin chokes on a chip.

“We’re gonna involve a civilian _further_?” Chan says.

“I told you you wouldn’t like it, but hear me out,” Woojin says. “One, Hyunjin is already on radar. Two, he’ll have protection.”

“I don’t mind, I was just surprised,” Hyunjin says quickly. “I _am_ already involved, and I wanna help if I can. What do I have to do?”

“I want you to send a message out to all the phones and computers in the city,” Woojin says, before Chan can open his mouth and interject. “Tell them J.One will be making an announcement in the Central Plaza at 3AM.”

Seungmin’s been to the Central Plaza only once, a huge square in the heart of District 9’s downtown, surrounded by skyscrapers and landmark infrastructure. “I’ll do it,” Hyunjin says.

“Whoa,” Chan says, gesturing frantically. “What’s the protection Hyunjin will supposedly be having? I’m not a technopath, but I feel like that’s gonna leave a big technological footprint.”

“You’re the protection,” Woojin says. “I want you to stay back with him in case anything happens. The goal here _is_ to leave a big technological footprint. I want to draw our opponents out. Currently, they’ve been operating behind a wall, or, well, a screen, but all your powers are physical. So _you_ want to fight them face to face.”

“ _I_ don’t like this, either,” Jisung says. “You’re putting Hyunjin in danger.”

Woojin smiles, amused. “He’s kinda already in danger.”

Jisung opens his mouth, then closes it, not finding any good argument. “So then, what’s this about me making an announcement in the Central Plaza at 3AM?”

“That’s pretty straightforward. Hyunjin will tell people to come see you, and they will, since J.One is kind of famous around here. Then you make the announcement. Something along the lines of, PSA: energy is not as great as everyone thinks, it actually causes people to badly crash after awhile. I don’t know. You’re better at speeches and being flashy than I am.”

“And that’ll work?”

“I think it will. Words are pretty powerful. That’s why XTech’s been trying to shut people up.” Woojin grins, and Seungmin thinks that Woojin was lying when he said he didn’t have a power. He does. He can operate backstage, and make everything happen.

“But I do recognize some people won’t believe you,” Woojin says. “Which is where Changbin comes in. I found the address of the energy manufacturing plant, and Changbin, you’re pretty good with your shadows. I want you to destroy it. Jam up supply lines so that people will have time to think what Jisung said over.”

“I can do that,” Changbin says. “But I don’t like the idea of working alone. We’re 3racha for a  reason.”

“Also, we’re putting a giant target on Jisung’s back by doing this,” Chan says. “You’re basically giving a time and a location to go kill him.”

“I’m not that easily killed,” Jisung protests.

“Again, we’re trying to draw our opponents out,” Woojin says. “Changbin, destroy the plant by 3AM, and then go back Jisung up.”

Seungmin lets that sink in. Jisung might be making an announcement, but he’s also going to function as a giant homing beacon. That’s more than a little worrisome, but it’s also laughable that Seungmin is worrying, he supposes. A civilian, concerned for a superhero’s welfare.

“You’re banking on the idea of facing trouble,” Changbin says.

“Yes,” Woojin says. His voice is confident, even if Seungmin bets he’s as uneasy as any of them. “This is your last gig as 3racha, right? Go out with a bang.”

Oh, Seungmin thinks. They really won’t be 3racha anymore, after this. The city will lose its superheroes. And Chan, Jisung, and Changbin will get their lives back. High school is a full time job, a murder on _anybody_.

“Our last gig as 3racha,” Changbin echoes.

“In the morning, we can focus on making sure everyone involved in this is safe,” Chan says, diverting attention off of the sad tint to Changbin’s voice. “I don’t care if I won’t be CB97 anymore. I’ve got your backs no matter what.”

“Spoken like a true superhero,” Hyunjin comments.

Seungmin reaches out for another chip. “What day is this going to happen?”

“I was thinking Friday. A lot of people will be up late at night downtown, partying and such,” Woojin says.

Jisung turns to Seungmin. “ _You_ are not going to be downtown,” he says. “Please.”

Seungmin keeps his face carefully blank. “I know, I’m not part of the plan,” he says, vague.

His own plan is forming, unspoken. He’ll pack his bags, and then on Friday, he’ll go visit downtown to see 3racha’s last showdown before hitting the road to nowhere; he needs to make sure after all this, Felix is safe.

\---

Friday comes, his last day at Sands Academy.

At midnight, Felix is passed out on the couch. Seungmin thanks the heavens for Felix’s sleep schedule and quietly slips out the door, out the apartment, and heads toward the train station. In his bag are a few clothes, some money, several seeds to tide him over in case he needs food. He leaves behind a note with something that constitutes as an explanation.

The downtown of District 9 is alive at night, neon signs and a beat to the ground that sounds like a thousand footsteps. Seungmin can hear people laughing and talking. He walks in the direction of the Central Plaza and knows he isn’t imagining that most people are walking in that direction as well.

He thinks he can hear someone say, “J.One. Can you believe it? Do you think it’s real?”

Hyunjin’s message must have already been sent out. Seungmin tightens his fingers around the straps of his bag.

The Central Plaza is packed. Seungmin’s body thrums with adrenaline, but the events in real life don’t match up— it won’t be 3AM for another half hour or so. He resigns himself to waiting, until someone flashes by his side.

Seungmin blinks. “What—”

J.One pulls down his mask and becomes Jisung.

“What the hell are you _doing_ here?” Jisung asks, voice distressed.

“What the rest of the population of District 9 is doing,” Seungmin says. “Waiting for J.One to show up.”

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Jisung says, and Seungmin realizes in horror that by the glint of moonlight, Jisung’s eyes might be filled with tears. “What’s in the bag?”

“I didn’t tell you,” Seungmin says. “XTech threatened me again, but this time, he also threatened Felix. I’m going to hear your speech tonight, and then I’m going.”

It only takes a few seconds for Jisung to digest the information, and surprisingly, he doesn’t seem that shocked. He’s many things, but not shocked. “Going? Where?”

“Away. Haven’t figured out the details. I’m sorry.” Seungmin can’t look at Jisung— he didn’t want to say goodbye, but now, everything is tumbling out of him. It’s deep into the night; this might as well be a fever dream. “I’m really glad I got to meet you.”

“Don’t say that, I, we can figure it out. I might not be J.One after this but I’ll always— I’ll always help you,” Jisung says, and Seungmin just smiles, sad. Baseless confidence. “You can’t just _leave_.”

Seungmin says nothing, and they square off for awhile, skyscrapers growing around them like some kind of huge metallic forest, other people waiting for a show to come. Jisung’s expression changes in a moment, snapping into something that belongs to J.One.

“Shit,” he mutters. “I think Changbin’s in trouble.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just _feel_ it, stay right here. I have to go.”

But if Jisung knows Changbin’s next actions, then Seungmin knows Jisung’s; he grabs Jisung’s hand, right as he’s about to teleport.

When Seungmin feels his feet touch the ground, he doesn’t regain his capability of movement a second later like he always does— in fact, something is very wrong. He’s in a building, everything shadowy, and he can’t move.

A darkness creeps into his mind, and Seungmin feels someone’s gaze on him, icy and sharp.

 _You think you can defeat me so easily?_ a voice in his mind says, not his own. Seungmin knows. This must be MindWarp. _Ha. All I can say is, thanks for getting all those people in one place for me. Make them forget any of this ever happened. As for you…_

Seungmin gasps for breath. He knows that Woojin’s plan has been derailed beyond repair. He knows what MindWarp can do, but he has never experienced it for himself, somebody else in his mind. It’s the worst feeling in the world, and MindWarp plays on his terror, thrives on it.

He’s just about to lose his mind when he does. Something streaks through the air, and Seungmin can move again. In disbelief, he sees MindWarp’s face covered by— a cat? He must be hallucinating. It’s a cat.

What Woojin says flashes through his mind. _Mind control only works when they see you._ Shadows lift off the ground and fly, one of them forming the shape of a shield and hovering in front of Seungmin, Changbin’s handiwork.

MindWarp fights the cat off, and Seungmin doesn’t think, just grabs a handful of seeds and throws them. There’s no soil, no sunlight, but Seungmin forces the seeds to open, to germinate against their will, to crawl in vines around the villain’s body up to their face.

Seungmin’s head explodes in pain; his muscles give out on him.

“Damn, Seungmin, what have you not been telling me,” someone says. Seungmin can’t see him clearly, but he knows Felix’s signature deep voice.

Shit. It’s Felix. And the cat is Tree?

“What are you _doing_ here?” Jisung yells, to Felix, and to someone else, who might be— Minho?

“Could ask the same thing to you,” Felix says. “Our friends have been acting really strange lately, you know? Minho and I decided to investigate.”

“Get out, I can take it from here!” Changbin yells, voice equally strained and disbelieving, and Jisung yanks Seungmin in by the arm— Seungmin has no strength, and allows himself to be dragged like a limp doll— and teleports Seungmin, Felix, and Minho out into the night.

\---

It’s two minutes to 3AM, and people are crowded inside the Central Plaza, murmuring excitedly.

Seungmin’s head feels like it’s full of static, and he wonders if he’s dreaming when a figure appears up atop one of the buildings. Like a superhero straight out of a comic. “It’s J.One!” People say, pointing when they spot him.

At midnight, the figure speaks. “Hey, citizens of District 9,” he says. “I’ve got a message for you.”

It’s Jisung. Seungmin knows it’s Jisung behind that mask, behind J.One. He would know it even if he didn’t know it. The mask has been fitted with a filter so that the sound will be altered, along with a magnifier so the sound will be magnified for the city to hear, but Seungmin knows only one person with that much passion to his voice.

Jisung really is cut out to be a superhero, even if he says he’ll lose the title after this endeavor. Seungmin smiles a bit. He can’t believe he got to know a superhero. He can’t believe he knows the selfless, incredible idiot behind the alter-ego. Jisung is talking, but Seungmin can’t register the words. He’s so tired.

He’s glad Jisung got up there. His voice floats up high over the city, and Seungmin receives it like someone underwater. He can’t keep his eyes open any longer, and he falls asleep to Felix holding him steady, and Jisung delivering his message to District 9.

\---

Seungmin wakes up to afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows.

Dazedly, he registers he’s back in the apartment, Felix doing homework next to him. It’s Saturday. “What time is it?”

“Oh, nice, you’re awake,” Felix chirps. “Maybe you can explain why you wrote a note that you were going to run away.”

Seungmin scans Felix’s face— there’s no anger, just resignation and sadness. The world is a mess around him, and Felix looks so, so sad. He dimly wonders if District 9 is aware that they have just lost their superheroes. Right now, he owes an explanation to his best friend.

“I was threatened by a supervillain that you might get hurt,” Seungmin says. “I couldn’t let that happen.”

“And you decided you were going to leave? To keep me safe?” Felix asks, disbelieving. “Do you know how much that would hurt on its own?”

Seungmin’s starting to realize that his plan has a lot of holes, but to be honest, he was beyond exhausted the past few days to the point that it seemed rational to his addled mind. “You were mad at me,” he mumbles.”

“Well, yeah, because you weren’t telling me anything. But people get mad at each other all the time. Doesn’t mean I’d— given _up_ on you or something like that.” Felix shakes his head. “I wish… you placed more value in yourself.”

This is vaguely reminiscent of his conversation with Woojin, and it’s edging on dangerous territory. “How’d you find out about all of this?” Seungmin asks.

“I’ve known you since forever, it wasn’t hard to realize something was up. Especially after that deal with Hyunjin being your boyfriend— he’s not your boyfriend, is he?” Seungmin shakes his head, relieved to be of that lie. “Okay, figured. But you clearly weren’t going to say what was up, so I had to figure it out on my own. I’m still really confused, by the way. For one— 3racha?”

“Do you know who 3racha are?” Seungmin says, secretive on instinct.

“I know that J.One is Jisung,” Felix says. “Not sure who SpearB and CB97 are.”

“Alright.” Felix just _looks_ at him, like, _is that all you have to say_? “I’ll explain, okay? I just— don’t know how. It’s a long story. And I’m still worried because…”

“Because you’re on the radar of a supervillain,” Felix finishes, and Seungmin nods. “God, you’re so stupid. If you’re on radar, then put me on radar with you. We’re family.”

So Seungmin starts, but he doesn’t get very far, because the apartment door bangs open with their mom holding a bunch of plastic bags from the convenience store. Seungmin automatically goes to hold the door, unknowingly facilitating her oncoming interrogation.

“Seungmin,” she says, and oh boy, she wants to know something from him, too. “I just got a notification that your Sands scholarship has been restored. Do you know how that happened?”

Seungmin legitimately has no answer to that. To all the questions he was expecting, that wasn’t it.

“My— _what_?” he asks.

“Listen, I know I haven’t gotten to talk to you in awhile,” she says, lines in her forehead and her eyes, out of guilt and frustration. “And I’m really sorry for that. So you’re going to have to tell me when your scholarship.”

“My scholarship is nonexistent,” Seungmin says. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Check your computer, I swear it’s true,” she says, and Seungmin sits on the couch, opening up his laptop, sandwiched between Felix and his mom. He is really, _really_ stupid— thinking he could just run away.

When the laptop boots up, it flashes, and Seungmin panics on instinct. But this doesn’t seem like XTech— for one, the cursor isn’t moving on its own. It’s a screen hovering above the actual screen, like a hologram, bearing a message.

_Kim Seungmin,_

_You’ve quite an interesting person, aren’t you?_

_My name is Illusion. I suppose you think that’s my supervillain alias— in fact, I think it’s rather neutral, like a stage name. I have always had the power to make people believe they were seeing, hearing, or feeling things they actually didn’t._

_I decided to become a scientist when I was in college. I was pretty good at it— after I graduated, I stumbled across a chemical formula that, when combined with my superpower, would provide the basis for a superhero supplement. I decided to call it energy._

_I collaborated with two people who you might know as MindWarp and XTech. Both of them were invested in the financial side of things— the money these new supplements would rake in while nobody knew the truth about them: that the illusion of energy wouldn’t last forever. I didn’t care for the money. I was simply curious about how people would react._

_We all dream of being superheroes when we are younger until we realize that we have to pay the price of hard work to use our powers. I wondered what people would do if they didn’t have to pay that price. Results were varied. Some people used their abilities to exact petty revenges, others used their abilities for cheap fame._

_Some people even tried to become superheroes and found it was harder than it seemed._

_You’ve caused a great deal of trouble, and given quite a show, and I believe there is nothing better in life than a good show— except for a good experiment, of course, but this one is over. To repay this, I pulled a couple of strings with Sands Academy, and reinstated a scholarship that I don’t believe should have taken away from you._

_Illusion._

“What the fuck,” Felix says, forgetting himself. “Is this for real?”

“Seungmin, what have you been _up_ to this past month?” his mom asks. Seungmin casts a panicked glance at Felix, who casts a panicked glance back.

“Um,” Seungmin says, nervous.

A quick movement from the side distracts him. The screen-above-the-screen disappears, like it was never there, leaving only his screensaver. When Seungmin checks his school account, he finds it’s true. He’ll continue to attend.

After all that has happened, he isn’t sure what to feel.

 

**[FUTURE]**

 

It’s a week before Seungmin runs into Jisung again.

District 9 is in hysterics. Law enforcement is baffled. Scientists are fighting to either verify or deny J.One’s claims. Hospitals are flooded with people wanting to get checked out. Companies are assaulted with demands to find an antidote, if an antidote can be found.

The public is on a hunt for the identities behind 3racha with a fervor greater than ever— but 3racha has seemingly disappeared. Seungmin knows, of course. 3racha _has_ disappeared.

Yet, Seungmin is almost immune to all of this going on. Today is the day of the PDSA, and all Seungmin can think of is finishing this damn test. He’s finished the reading section, but there’s still two hours left.

Bless this ten minute break. He isn’t about to fight anyone for rights to use the bathroom, but he can walk around the halls before he has to return back to the auditorium and go onto the grammar portion.

“Hey.”

It’s Jisung, falling in step beside him. “Hey,” Seungmin says.

“I see you’re still here.” Jisung’s voice is soft.

“Yeah, I am. I think I’ll be here for awhile,” Seungmin says, and Jisung’s face lights up. Seungmin doesn’t want to bring up Illusion’s message just yet. He thinks he’s done enough explanations for a lifetime.

“This damn test, am I right?” Jisung laughs. “I’ve never been good at standardized testing.”

“I can understand why, since it requires you to think for more than two seconds,” Seungmin says drily, and Jisung hits him.

“Ah, you’re right, though. I didn’t understand anything in that passage about mollusks,” Jisung grumbles, and Seungmin winces at the reminder. Yeah, what _was_ that crap? “Hey, at least we got memes to look forward to after.”

“There are memes?”

“Um, hell yes, there are memes. Every sixteen-year-old in the Districts is taking this test today. There are going to be memes.”

“Nice,” Seungmin says, and then the two of them silently agree to wheel and go back around to the auditorium, since there aren’t that many minutes left of break, if any. Seungmin slides back into his seat, picks up his pencil, and gets ready for another two hours of hell.

The conversation leaves him with a warm feeling, and a little bit of anxiety. He doesn’t know where he and Jisung stand now without the immediate context of a superhero plot. Jisung is just Jisung now, no J.One. It makes Seungmin nervous. He looks down at the test, almost grateful for the distraction.

He’ll figure it out.

\---

It’s three weeks before things return somewhat to normal.

Seungmin is alive, Felix is alive, there have been no threats made on their lives (that he knows of, at least), and his laptop hasn’t spit out any strange messages for awhile.

It feels _abnormal_ , however, to be attending Sands under some kind of sketchy scholarship; he half-expects someone to tell him he isn’t supposed to be here any moment now, but nobody does.

And it feels abnormal to be on good terms with Jisung.

The two of them aren’t friends. That doesn’t seem like quite the correct label. Seungmin’s not sure what to call them.

“Is that history?” Jisung says, sliding into the seat across from where Seungmin is studying in the library.

He has a lot of time to do that, now, without his job at For You. It’s the most bizarre thing, but he’s grateful for it— he essentially started the school year off with failing grades. “Yeah. I don’t get politics.”

“Trust me, I don’t either.”

“What are you doing here?”

“What, you don’t like my presence?” Jisung asks, mock-hurt, and Seungmin raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “Nah. I’m just here after the pre-season track meeting. I was thinking about doing it.”

“Track?” Seungmin verifies. Jisung nods. “Don’t cheat and teleport your way to the finish line, that’s all I’ll say.”

“ _Hey_ ,” Jisung protests, but Seungmin won’t take it back. “I just, I figured that I wanted to do some kind of club now that I’m…” Not J.One anymore. Seungmin hears it perfectly, although Jisung doesn’t say it. “You know. Changbin’s on math team.”

“Math team,” Seungmin drawls. “That’s pretty cool, actually.”

“I heard you threatened to make flowers grow out of his chest.”

Seungmin shrugs. Changbin had asked him for permission to ask Felix out— Seungmin had said yes, but if Changbin fucks up, he’ll do as aforementioned. “Yeah, I did.”

“Can you actually do that? You know what, nevermind, I don’t wanna know,” Jisung adds quickly. “Woojin and Chan are super busy with college applications, man, I never wanna become a senior.”

“Don’t even think about it, that’s like… a whole year away.”

“But they make me think about it,” Jisung whines, and Seungmin supposes that well, he can relate, because Minho’s swamped with applications as well, and all the complaints have leached into his brain. “What do you think you wanna major in?”

“What do _you_ think you wanna major in?”

“I asked first.” Seungmin stares him down, and Jisung caves. “Fine, I don’t know. Law? Or Socio, maybe?”

“You’ll be good at that,” Seungmin says, although he doesn’t have the faintest clue about what either of those things entail. He just knows that Jisung can pull off pretty much anything. “I haven’t thought about what I’m going to major in, to be honest.”

“No, that’s totally fair. I was just asking.”

College. Seungmin is still amazed he’s kept his place in Sands. But with the present seeming mostly secure under his feet, thoughts about the future have crept unbidden into his mind, unfurling like some kind of secretive flower. He isn’t willing to look at the blooms quite yet, though.

“How’s Hyunjin, by the way?” Seungmin asks.

“We joked that Changbin’s mom might adopt him, but I’m not sure how much of a joke it is anymore,” Jisung says. “I don’t know. Woojin’s doing research on it when he’s not panicking over college apps.”

Even without the threat of a supervillain, Hyunjin had been a concern, with one parent dead and the other parent so absent that Hyunjin might as well have been left an orphan. “That’s good,” Seungmin says.

“What about you?” Jisung’s eyes are so intense.

“What do you mean, what about me?”

“You look good,” Jisung says, and Seungmin raises an eyebrow. “Like I mean, you don’t look so tired anymore.”

“Thanks,” Seungmin says, trying to squash down the warm feeling at Jisung’s words, robbing him of any ability to come up with some kind of witty retort. _Come on. Think_. “I’m glad I don’t look like a dead man walking anymore, too.”

\---

It’s a month and a half before Seungmin starts to have hope.

A hesitant kind of hope, so he’s not too disappointed if it gets taken away from him. But a hope nonetheless. Like maybe something good will happen.

“You know what we should do?” Jisung says. Seungmin was planning on going to Room 419, but Jisung’s pre-season track practice had been cancelled, and he had accosted Seungmin in the hallway. “We should go to the mall.”

Actually, Seungmin should study, but he says, “Any particular reason?”

“I don’t know, it’s just a really stereotypically high-school thing and I’ve never done it,” Jisung says. And Seungmin _should_ study, and Jisung should learn that he can’t just get something out of Seungmin with a smile and a pleading lilt to his voice, but actually, he can. “Let’s go?”

“Fine,” Seungmin relents.

The two of them head a few blocks down, where the mall is located, a popular hangout spot on most days. Seungmin doesn’t know what hanging out a mall entails. “We don’t spend any money, right?”

“No. We just loiter.”

To be honest, Seungmin doesn’t get the point of this, but he doesn’t hate this. He actually kind of likes making fun of overpriced items and pointing to the occasional bizarre thing displayed in a shop front window.

Jisung lied about the not spending money, but only a little bit— he buys a giant pretzel, hands the bigger half to Seungmin, and the two of them sit around in the food court and debate whether cinnamon or chocolate would hypothetically make a better topping on this.

When Seungmin stands up, Jisung takes his hand.

Seungmin’s kind of used to this because of how much they’ve teleported, but he’s never been quite so aware of how warm Jisung’s hand is, or how well their fingers fit together. “Where are we going?” he asks, and his voice sounds a little off to his own ears.

“On a date. I like you,” Jisung says, and his words are smooth, but his voice shakes a bit, as well. “Is that okay?”

And Seungmin is of mind to say no, just because he is so used to it being a time where there is a reason to say no, and perhaps he will never shake that anxiety, but—

Oh, Jisung’s not teleporting him anywhere, this time, and it’s just a gesture of affection. _I like you_. Seungmin always has that thought that Jisung is destined for places beyond his reach, and Seungmin is just destined for— not much, but well, if Jisung were to go anywhere right now, he’d take Seungmin with him.

Besides, Seungmin is tired of saying no.

“Yeah,” he says, and Jisung beams.

**Author's Note:**

> alright if you're down here thank you for making it!! i wrote this during finals week and tried to clean it up as best i could with a lot of intensive editing, but i mean, if it doesn't make sense- i can neither blame nor help you i'm sorry


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